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THE BRONZE AGE
Cambridge University Press
Fetter Lane, London
;\JPW York
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Toronto
Macmillan
Tokyo
Maruzen Company, Ltd
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THE BRONZE AGE
by
V. GORDON CHILDE, B.LITT.
F. R.A.I., F. S.A., F.S. A.Scot.
Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology
in the University of Edinburgh
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
MCMXXX
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
CONTENT^
Preface ....... page xi
CHAPTERS
I The Implications of the Bronze Age . . I
II Metallurgy and Trade . . . . 28
Mining and Smelting, 28 ; Casting and Moulds, 30 ; Trade in the Ancient
East, 385 Bronze Age Trade in Europe, 405 Definition of a Culture, 41 5
Hoards, 43; Trade Routes, 46; the Climate of the Bronze Age, 485
Vehicles and Ships, 49; Writing, Weights and Measures, 535 Typo-
logical Chronology, 53; Absolute Chronology, 58
III Typology ...... 60
Celts (Axe-heads), 60 j T-axe, 675 Adzes, 67; Chisels and Gouges, 70;
Axes (Shaft-hole axes), 715 Transverse Axe (Shaft-hole Adze), 725
Double-axe, 72 j Axe-Adze, 74$ Battle- Axes, 75; Daggers, 75; Rapiers,
82 j Swords, 84; Chapes, 87; Halberds, 87$ Spear-heads, 89$ Arrow-
heads, 935 Knives, 945 Razors, 975 Tweezers, 1005 Sickles, 101;
Harness, 1025 Ornaments, 1055 Pins, 105; Bracelets, Anklets and
Collars, 1175 Finger-rings, 125; Buttons, Clasps, Studs and Tutuli,
1265 Ear-rings and Lock-rings, 129; Necklaces and Pendants, 1325
Vessels, 135
IV The Early Bronze Age . . . .138
Central Europe, 1395 Upper Italy, 1455 Spain, 146.5 Great Britain, 153
V The Middle Bronze Age . . . .168
Scandinavia, 1685 the Tumulus Bronze Culture, 1735 the Italian Terre-
mare, 1785 Hungary, i8ij the Rh6ne Culture, 1855 Great Britain, 186
VI CONTENTS
VI The Late Bronze Age . . . page 192
Sicily, 195; Sardinia, 1975 the Villanova Culture in Italy, 2015 the
Lausitz Culture, 205; the Alpine Urnfields, 2095 the North, 2165
Hungary and Russia, 2215 Great Britain, 224
VII Races 238
Bibliography . . . . . .248
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Food Vessel from Argyllshire ..... frontispiece
Fig. i page 31
(i) Nilotic smith at work; (2) Clay nozzle from pile-village of Morigen,
Switzerland (after Ischer); (3) Egyptian goldsmiths (after de Morgan).
Fig- 2 33
(i) Stone mould for flat celt, Scotland; (2) Stone valve-mould for spear-
heads, British Museum; (3) Bronze valve-mould for palstave, British
Museum; (4) Clay mould for socketed celt, Heathery Burn cave;
(5) Reconstruction of a three-piece mould for bronze buttons.
Knee-shaft of wood for hafting celts . . . . . 59
Fig. 3 63
(i) Flat celt, Egypt, protodynastic; (2) Flat celt, Susa, prediluvian;
(3) Flat celt, Scotland, Early Bronze Age; (4) Winged-flanged celt,
Scotland, Early to Middle Bronze Age; (5) Palstave, England, Middle
Bronze Age; (6) Palstave with ear, England, Late Bronze Age; (7) Two-
eared palstave, England; (8) Winged celt with ear, England, Late Bronze
Age; (9) Winged adze with ear, Switzerland, Late Bronze Age; (10)
Socketed celt, England, Late Bronze Age.
ILLUSTRATIONS Vll
Fig. 4 page 69
(1) Long flanged celt, South-western Germany, Middle Bronze Age 5
(2) Long winged celt, South-western Germany, Middle Bronze Age 5
(3) Constricted celt, Switzerland, Middle Bronze Age 5 (4) Bohemian pal-
stave, Bohemia, Middle Bronze Age ; (5) Northern type of flanged celt,
Denmark, Middle Bronze Age ; (6) Northern type of socketed celt, Den-
mark, Middle Bronze Age ; (7) Socketed celt with imitation wings,
Hungary, Late Bronze Age; (8) Flanged celt, Silesia.
Fig. 5 69
(i) T-axe, Egypt, Old to Middle Kingdom; (2) Egyptian round-headed
adze; (3) Lug adze, Sicily, Late Bronze Age; (4) Socketed gouge,
Heathery Burn cave ; (5) Tanged chisel, early type, England ; (6) Tanged
chisel, later type, England.
Fig. 6 73
(i) Early Sumerian axe, Ur; (2) Sumerian transverse axe, Ur; (3) Copper
axe, Hungary; (4) Symbolic double-axe, Rhine; (5) Axe-adze, Crete,
Middle Minoan; (6) Axe-adze, Hungary, "Copper Age".
Fig. 7 77
(i) Predynastic flat dagger with handle; (2) West European dagger,
England; (3) Round-heeled dagger, England, Early Bronze Age;
(4) Asiatic tanged dagger, Ur, early Sumerian; (5) Cypriote dagger from
Hungary; (6) Bronze-hilted dagger, Bohemia, Early Bronze Age;
(7) Ogival dagger, South Germany, Middle Bronze Age.
Fig. 8. Rapiers and swords . . . . . . 81
(i) Mycenae, Shaft Graves, M.M. Ill, type I; (2) Mycenae, Shaft
Graves, M.M. Ill, type II a\ (3) Mycenae, Shaft Graves, M.M. Ill,
type 116; (4) Crete, Zafer Papoura, L.M. Ill, cruciform guards;
(5) Crete, Zafer Papoura, L.M. Ill, horned guards; (6) South-western
Germany, Middle Bronze Age; (7) Hungary, Late Bronze Age;
(8) Bavaria, Middle Bronze Age; (9) Hungary, Late Bronze Age;
(10) Morigen sword, Switzerland; (n) Antennae sword, Switzerland;
(12) Hallstatt sword of bronze, Early Iron Age, Austria.
Fig. 9 88
(i) Looped chape, Bavaria, Middle Bronze Age; (2) Chape, Scotland,
Late Bronze Age; (3) Winged chape, Scotland, Hallstatt pattern;
(4) Bronze shafted halberd, Early Bronze Age, Germany; (5) Halberd
blade, Italy, Early Bronze Age; (6) Middle Bronze Age sword, Denmark.
Vlll ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 10. Spear-heads page 91
(i) Poker-butted, Ur, Early Sumerian; (2) Tanged, England, Early
Bronze Age; (3) Tanged with ferrule, England, Early to Middle Bronze
Age; (4) Two-eared, Ireland, Middle Bronze Age; (5) With loops in
base of blade, England, Middle to Late Bronze Age; (6) With slits in
blade, Scotland, Late Bronze Age.
Fig. ii. Knives ........ 96
(i) Flame-shaped, Troy II; (2) Tanged, South Germany, Late Bronze
Age D ; (3) Bronze-handled, Bohemia, Late Bronze Age D ; (4) Flanged,
Bavaria, Late Bronze Age E ; (5) Socketed, Alsace, Late Bronze Age E ;
(6) Tanged, Switzerland, Late Bronze Age E; (7) Swiss type, Late
Bronze Age E; (8) Double-edged tanged, England, Late Bronze Age;
(9) Double-edged socketed, England, Late Bronze Age; (10) Curved,
Scotland, Late Bronze Age.
Fig. 12 99
(i) Minoan single-edged razor, Zafer Papoura; (2) Minoan double-
edged razor, Zafer Papoura; (3, 4) Siculan II razors, earlier type;
(5) Terremare razor, Upper Italy; (6) Double-edged razor, Bohemia;
(7} Horse-shoe razor, South-west Germany; (8) Rectangular razor,
Villanova; (9) Late Siculan II razor; (10) Double-edged razor, England;
(n) Single-edged razor, Denmark.
Fig. 13 103
(i) Button sickle, England, Middle Bronze Age; (2) Grooved sickle,
Italy, Middle Bronze Age; (3) Socketed sickle, Ireland, Late Bronze Age;
(4) Hooked sickle, Transylvania, Late Bronze Age; (5) Bugle-shaped
object from harness, England, Late Bronze Age; (6) Reconstruction of
bit with horn cheek-pieces and wooden bar; (7) Jointed bronze bit,
Swiss lakes, Late Bronze Age.
Fig. 14 109
(i) Roll-headed pin, Kish, Early Sumerian; (2) Toggle pin, Kish, Early
Sumerian; (3) Racket pin, Ur, Early Sumerian; (4) Wheel pin, South-
west Germany, Middle Bronze Age; (5) Knot-headed pin, Bohemia,
Early Bronze Age; (6) Aunjetitz pin, Bohemia, Early Bronze Age;
(7) Pin with bent disk head, Bohemia, Late Bronze Age; (8) Sunflower
pin, Ireland, Late Bronze Age; (9) Pin with lateral loop, England, Late
Bronze Age; (10) Ribbed pin, Alsace, Late Bronze Age; (n) Vase-
headed pin, Bavaria, Late Bronze Age; (12) Violin-bow fibula, Switzer-
land, Middle Bronze Age ; (i 3) Simple arc fibula, Italy, Late Bronze Age ;
(14) Hungarian fibula with looped bow, Late Bronze Age; (15) Elbow
fibula, Siculan II; (16) Two-piece fibula, Denmark, Middle Bronze Age;
(17) Two-piece fibula, Denmark, Late Bronze Age.
ILLUSTRATIONS IX
Fig. 15 page 119
(i) Heavy ribbed armlet, Bavaria, Late Bronze Age 5 (2) Gold armlet,
Ireland, Middle to Late Bronze Age; (3) Hungarian armlet, with spiral
ends, Middle Bronze Age; (4) Horizontally ribbed armlet, Hungary,
Middle Bronze Age; (5) Hooked double armlet, England, Middle
Bronze Age; (6) Spiral-ended anklet, Alsace, Late Bronze Age; (7) Ingot
torque, Bohemia, Early Bronze Age; (8) Gold ear-ring, Troy II;
(9) Twisted gold armlet, England; (10) Spiral-ended finger-ring, South
Germany; (n) Helical wire tutulus, Bavaria, Early Bronze Age;
(12) Spiked tutulus, Hungary, Middle Bronze Age; (13, 14) Gold lock-
rings, Early and Middle Bronze Age.
Fig. 16 125
(i) Gold torque, Scotland, Middle Bronze Age; (2) Twisted gold arm-
let, Scotland, Middle Bronze Age (after Anderson).
Fig. 17 . . . . ' 131
(i) Bronze collar, Denmark, Middle Bronze Age; (2) Bronze tutulus,
Denmark, Middle Bronze Age; (3) Bronze tutulus, Denmark, Middle
Bronze Age; (4) Hanging vase (tutulus), Denmark, Late Bronze Age;
(5) Bronze tutulus, Denmark, Late Bronze Age; (6) Torque with alter-
nating torsion, Denmark, Late Bronze Age; (7) Gold "sun disk",
Ireland, Late Bronze Age; (8) Penannular gold ornament, Ireland, Late
Bronze Age.
Fig. 1 8 . 133
(i) Jet necklace, Scotland, Early Bronze Age; (2) Button with V-per-
foration, England, Early Bronze Age; (3) Jet pulley ring; (4) Segmented
bead, England, Middle to Late Bronze Age.
* Fig. 19. Irish gold lunula 137
?ig. 20 143
(i) Early Aunjetitz pouched jug, Moravia; (2) Aunjetitz dish; (3) Mature
Aunjetitz jug, Moravia; (4) El Argar bowl; (5) El Argar goblet; (6) El
Argar beaker; (7) Food vessel with shoulder groove, Scotland (after
Anderson); (8) Food vessel (after Anderson).
'ig. 21 165
(i) Conventionalized human figures carved on rocks of Galicia ; (2) Cover-
stone of a kist at Carnwarth, Lanarkshire; (3) Slab from the tomb at
Kivik, Sweden.
X ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 22 page 177
(1) Jug ornamented with warts, Tumulus culture, Wurtemberg;
(2) Cup with fretwork patterns. Tumulus culture} (3) Pannonian cup;
(4) Pannonian cup 5 (5) Cup, south Hungarian urnfields; (6) South
Hungarian urn ; (7) Urn with wart ornament, terremare of Italy.
Fig. 23 182
(i) Hungarian battle axe; (2) Disk-head pin, Hungarian type; (3) Mush-
room pin of Hungarian type; (4) Cylinder, Hungary; (5) Sacral ivy-
leaf pendant, Hungary; (6) Pectiform pendant, Hungary.
Fig. 24. British cinerary urns . . . . . .188
(i) Overhanging rim type, early; (2) Overhanging rim type, later form;
(3) Cordoned urn, Scotland; (4) Bucket urn, Dorset; (5) Encrusted urn,
Scotland; (6) Urn of Type 3, group 2; (7) Cornish urn; (8) Globular
urn; (9) Incense cup with slits; (10) Incense cup; (n) Grape cup.
Bronze figure from Sardinia 191
Fig. 25. Late Bronze Age urns ...... 203
(i) Transitional type, Bismantova, North Italy; (2) Villanovan ossuary;
(3) Urn with cylindrical neck, Wurtemberg; (4) Pillar urn, Tyrol;
(5) Hut urn, Latium.
Fig. 26. Lausitz grave group (after Antiquity) . . . 207
Fig. 27. Bronze vessels . . . . . . .223
(i) Gold cup from hoard of Unter-Glauheim, Bavaria; (2) Bronze
cauldron with T-handles, same hoard; (3) Bronze bucket with birds'
heads, same hoard ; (4) Bronze cauldron, West Scotland (after Anderson),
Fig. 28. Bronze shield, Scotland, Late Bronze Age (after Anderson) 225
Fig. 29. Lurer, Denmark 23 :
Fig. 30. Bronze shield, Bohemia 23^
Fig. 31. Late Bronze Age trumpet from Scotland (after Anderson) 24*
MAP of Bronze Age Europe . ... in pocket at em
PREFACE
This book is intended to take up the story of prehis-
toric industrial development in North-western Europe
from the point at which Mr M. C. Burkitt's Our Early
Ancestors left it. While not a sequel to that work, mine
presupposes such knowledge of general prehistory and
the New Stone Age as may be found there and is
intended to appeal to the same class of students. On the
other hand, the nature and increased complexity of the
material involves difference of treatment. And for the
purposes of this more intensive study some of the
divisions and classifications of the Bronze Age material,
foreshadowed in one preliminary chapter of Mr Burkitt's
book, have needed modification on lines explained here.
Otherwise, I have refrained from duplicating his work
save in so far as was necessary to make this book a
complete and independent whole.
The bibliography aims primarily at indicating general
works from which more detailed references can be
obtained. Nevertheless some articles of outstanding
importance or describing phases of Bronze Age
civilization not yet adequately dealt with in larger
comprehensive works have been included, even when
they appear in comparatively obscure periodicals.
Xll PREFACE
My thanks are due to the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland and to the Trustees of the British Museum
for permission to reproduce figures; to Mrs M. C.
Burkitt for her skilful re-drawing of some of the figures;
and to Mr A. J. Edwards for reading the proofs.
V. GORDON CHILDE
EDINBURGH
1930
THE BRONZE AGE
CHAPTER I
THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
BRONZE AGE
E story of human culture has long been divided
JL conventionally into three main volumes according to
the material generally employed for the principal cutting
implements. At first our forerunners could only make
knives and axes by chipping or grinding stone, bone or
ivory. The period when such tools were alone in use is
termed the Stone Age and constitutes the first volume,
Mr Burkitt's books cited in the Bibliography give a
good summary of its contents. The second volume opens
when man has learned that certain kinds of stone may
be compelled by heating under suitable conditions to
yield a substance which, while hot, can be modelled or
even run into a mould, but on cooling retains its shape
and becomes harder and more durable than stone and
takes as good an edge. This epoch is termed the Bronze
Age — not very happily, since the first metal used in-
dustrially to any extent was copper ; only by an accident
in the areas where archaeology was first extensively
studied — Denmark, England and France — was the
copper already mixed with tin in the majority of early
metal tools. The Bronze Age comes to an end when
methods have been devised for extracting economically
and working efficiently the much commoner metal,
iron, which then replaces copper and its alloys in the
manufacture of the crucial implements.
Thanks to the Epics, the Greeks were naturally well
aware that the Iron Age in which they dwelt had been
preceded by one in which " men used weapons of bronze
2 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
and wrought with bronze; for black iron was not".
But it is Lucretius who first expressly states that bronze
tools and weapons mark a stage intermediate between
the age of stone implements and the Iron Age he knew.
A Dane, Thomsen, revived or rediscovered Lucretius'
division early last century. And the tripartite division
was soon applied also to England, France, Germany
and Italy.
In these regions the system works admirably. A well-
defined group of remains from tombs and villages can
be assigned to a period of time when bronze was current
but anterior to the adoption of iron. Yet in this sense
the Bronze Age occupies a disproportionately short
epoch in our series. The Stone Age had lasted a hundred
thousand years or so; the Iron Age in Great Britain is
already two thousand five hundred years old and seems
as vigorous as ever. Against this the Bronze Age in
Britain can only claim fifteen hundred or, on the most
generous estimate, two thousand years. But, if in Nor-
thern Europe bronze played a leading role in industry
for a relatively short span of years, in the Aegean area,
Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus valley, bronze, or
at least copper, had been in regular use for fully twice
as long. And those three or four thousand years wit-
nessed man's first emergence from barbarism to civiliza-
tion, the foundation of the first cities, the harnessing of
animal motive power, the invention of writing, the
establishment of consciously ordered government, the
beginnings of science, the specialization and consequent
perfection of the primary industrial arts, and the inaugu-
ration of international trade and intercourse. Hence our
Bronze Age volume makes up in wealth of incident for
its modest bulk.
All the vital elements of modern material culture are
BRONZE AGE 3
immediately rooted in the Bronze Age though their
presuppositions may go back to the closing phase of the
Stone Age (the so-called Neolithic Period). Nay more ;
modern science and industry not only go back to the
period when bronze was the dominant industrial metal,
their beginnings were in a very real sense conditioned
and inspired by the mere fact of the general employment
of bronze or copper. It is worth while considering
briefly the presuppositions of such a general use of
metal in order to make the point plain.
In the first place it implies a knowledge of the radical
transformation of the physical properties of the substance
by heat. The first smiths had discovered that a hard and
intractable reddish substance, copper, became malleable
and plastic on heating. You may even pour it like
water into a vessel, but on cooling it becomes as hard as
ever, assuming now the shape of the receptacle. Of
course metallic copper occurs " native " in nature. By
hammering, it may be shaped into imitations of the
simpler forms of stone or bone tools. The Indians of
Ohio employed the native metal in this way and treated
it as a peculiarly workable sort of stone, hammering it
without the aid of heat. But such an application of
Stone Age processes to native copper does not mark the
beginnings of the age of metals. There is no reason to
suppose that it led directly thereto. The superiority of
copper over stone or horn lies in its being fusible and
malleable. It can be shaped by casting into forms the
old materials could never assume, and the material in
itself imposes no limit to the size of the object to be
fashioned from it. A piece of stone or bone can only be
shaped by chipping, grinding or cutting bits off it;
your molten copper is completely plastic : you may use
as little or as much as you want without impairing its
1-2
4 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
solidity; you may even weld pieces together indissolubly
by heating and hammering.
The change in the properties of copper by heat is
really very startling; it is distinctly more dramatic than
the effect of baking upon potter's clay. By that process
a vessel is certainly rendered durable and deprived of
porosity. But the form and the texture are not super-
ficially altered. Moreover the process is irreversible.
It is a far greater leap from solid cold copper to the
glowing liquid metal, yet the change can be produced
as often as desired. To recognize the continuity under-
lying such transformations, to appreciate their practical
significance and to devise means for their control de-
manded a power of inference and synthesis unusual in
barbarians. The discoverers must implicitly make the
distinction between substance and its appearances and
so may justly claim a place among the founders of
science.
The effective utilization of the discoveries just ana-
lysed involved the elaboration of a highly complicated
technique through a series of inventions. The masters
of these mysteries, the first smiths, were perhaps the
first independent craftsmen. Any hunter or farmer
could make a flint knife or arrow-head and grind out a
stone axe-head in his spare time. His wife could stitch
together robes of skins, even spin and weave, and mould
and fire clay pots. The art of the smith was so complicated
that prolonged apprenticeship was required. His labour
was so long and exacting that it could not be performed
just in odd moments of leisure; it was essentially a full-
time job. And the smith's products were so important
to the community that those engaged directly in food
production must provide for his primary needs in addi-
tion to their own. Among primitive peoples to-day the
BRONZE AGE 5
smith always does enjoy just such a privileged position
as might be expected. In a Bronze Age village we often
find one hut, but never more, that was obviously the
smithy. In a Neolithic village on the contrary no certain
traces of industrial specialization are often detectable.
Even more startling and mysterious were the trans-
mutations involved in the extraction of the metal. As
we have noted, metallic copper occurs in nature, but
with a few exceptions, notably in North America and
South Africa, only in minimal quantities. In all other
regions, before copper could come into general use, the
metal must be extracted from its ores — oxides, sulphides,
silicates or carbonates — by a chemical process termed
reduction. Copper ores are crystalline or amorphous
substances, greenish blue, red or grey in cplour, found
in veins in old metamorphic or eruptive rocks. What
could be more startling than the evocation from these
greenish or grey stones, crystalline or powdery in tex-
ture, of the tough malleable red metal 1 Here is a
complete transmutation of the very nature of a material !
The process of reduction is indeed simple enough; heat
in contact with charcoal will effect it. But it was a
stupendous feat of generalization on the part of the
barbarian to connect green crystalline stones with the
tough red metal. The recognition of the underlying
continuity marked the beginning of chemistry.
The discovery of silver, lead and tin would be a
natural corollary. The possessors of these secrets would
easily gain credit for supernatural powers among bar-
barians to whom all stones looked much alike. They
would constitute a class or guild no less powerful than
the smiths. It would be their task to search out and
smelt the peculiar stones that would yield the coveted
metals.
6 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
Copper ores in small quantities and of poor quality are
very widely distributed. No doubt early man often ex-
ploited lodes that are so poor or have been so thoroughly
worked in the past that they are no longer mentioned in
text-books on mining geology. And surface lodes were
certainly once plentiful. But the time would soon come
when such deposits had been exhausted and the prospec-
tors must burrow underground for their ore. Mining
for flint had been practised in the Stone Age, but it was
a comparatively simple matter to dig pits and cut
galleries in the chalk (where the good flints occur).
Metal ores are embedded in very hard rock that can
only be cut with difficulty to-day. The exploitation of
copper on a large scale implied the solution of delicate
problems in mining engineering^). The Bronze Age
miners of Europe knew how to split rock by kindling
fire against it and then throwing water on it; they had
worked out methods of timbering subterranean galleries
and had devised pulley-buckets for raising the ore. A
curious sidelight on the unity of early metallurgy is
provided by the discovery in all ancient mines that have
been examined, whether in the Caucasus, Sinai, Austria,
Spain or Britain, of grooved hammer-stones (i.e. stones
girt with an artificial groove to receive the binding
thongs with which they were hafted at the end of a
split stick).
A. further chemical discovery was involved in the
advanced metallurgy of the Bronze Age. The addition
to copper of a small proportion of tin reduces its melting-
point, minimizes the danger of flaws from bubbles in
casting and increases the hardness of the cold alloy.
Here was another transmutation, the combination of
two dissimilar substances to produce a third different
from both. The alloy can be obtained either by smelting
BRONZE AGE 7
together the ores of tin and copper, or by melting tin
(or tin ore) with copper. In the first instance the alloy
may have been produced accidentally through the use
of a copper ore with which tin was mixed. It is, for
instance, curious that in Mesopotamia tin-bronze was
comparatively common before 3000 B.C. but becomes
rare after that date(n). A possible explanation is that
the Sumerians had unconsciously been using a stanni-
ferous ore the supplies of which gave out or were cut
off by 3000. In any case it seems certain that by (hen
they were deliberately trying to produce the superior
metal and seeking substitutes, adding, for instance, lead,
What is still more significant, by 2000 B.C. the ^mixture
now universally admitted to give the best results, of one
part tin to nine of copper, had already been recognized
as the standard combination. That implies a great deal
of critical examination — i.e. experiment in the modern
sense — since there is nothing in nature to suggest those
particular proportions.
Experiments were also made with other alloys. In
Hungary, the Baltic lands, and the Caucasus antimony
was sometimes used as a substitute for tin. We have
mentioned the possibility of a similar use of lead by the
Sumerians. Brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, has on
the other hand not been found before the Iron Age.
Thirdly, in addition to the physical and chemical
discoveries just described, the general use of metal
presupposes regular and extensive trade relations. Il
is indeed true that copper ores are fairly widely distri-
buted and that in early days poor lodes, now exhausted
or at least uneconomical, were exploited. None the
less the sources are definitely limited. The supplies are
situated almost exclusively in mountainous regions ; the
great civilizations of the Orient grew up in river valleys
8 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
entirely lacking in any ores. Similarly the most populous
centres of Neolithic culture in Europe, the loss lands
of Central Europe, the Ukraine, and Denmark, are
some way from the nearest copper lodes. Regular com-
munications must be established between Egypt and
Sinai, between Sumer and the Zagros or Caucasus,
between Denmark and the Eastern Alps, Slovakia or
England, before even copper could be regularly used
there.
The position is still worse when bronze and not pure1
copper is demanded; for now two foreign products are
needed one of which is distinctly rare. Tin occurs
certainly in the Malay Peninsula, South Africa, Khora-
san, Tuscany, the Bohemian Erzgebirge, Western and
Southern Spain, Southern France, Brittany and Corn-
wall, probably also in the Caucasus and Syria and
possibly even in Central Greece. Only in the Caucasus,
Bohemia, Spain and Cornwall do copper lodes occur in
any proximity to the tin ores. In most cases, therefore,
the use of bronze woi^ld involve trade in two distinct
metals that must be brought to a single meeting-point
from different quarters. The extant evidence suggests,
for instance, that Central European and Scandinavian
bronze-workers drew their copper from Slovakia or the
Austrian Alps and their tin from Bohemia or sometimes
England.
At the same time, within a given ethnic group the
individual farmer must sacrifice his economic inde-
1 Chemically pure copper could not have been prepared by the
ancients and would have had no special value for them. In this book
"pure" means " without intentional alloy". The accidental impurities
found in all ancient copper are valuable as indicating the source of the
ore used in the several regions. For instance, the high nickel content of
early Sumerian and Indus copper suggests that both civilizations were
drawing on the ores from Oman which show a high nickel content.
BRONZE AGE 9
pendence and the village its self-sufficiency as the price
of the new material. Each Neolithic household could
manufacture the requisite knives, axe-heads and awls
of flint, stone or bone ; the Neolithic village need never
look beyond its own domains for the necessary material
— nor did, save in the case of luxury articles such as
shells. But metal tools the farmer must, as we have
already seen, purchase from the expert, the village
smith. And the latter must, except in exceptional
circumstances, import his raw materials from outside
the communal boundaries. This is perhaps the essential
difference between the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. The
most striking feature of a Neolithic community was its
self-sufficiency. The sacrifice of that self-sufficiency was
only possible when certain sociological and economic
conditions had been fulfilled and brought in its train
a series of other political and industrial changes. That
in itself would explain why the Bronze Age did not
begin simultaneously all over the world or even all over
Europe. Peoples develop at unequal rates, and the
effective demand for and use of metal is only possible
when a certain stage of development has been reached.
The development of internal and foreign commerce
implied in a Bronze Age presupposes a certain degree
of political stability. One of the economic foundations
of the first Egyptian State was the exploitation of the
copper lodes of Sinai as a State enterprise by periodical
expeditions supported by the royal armies. Similarly
trade must go hand in hand with improvement in the
means of communication. The wheeled car and the
sailing ship appear in the Ancient East as heralds of
the age of metals. The same commercial needs must at
least have given an impulse to the development of
writing and seal-cutting. Letters and contracts dealing
10 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
with trade bulk largely in any collection of Babylonian
documents. And seals served in place of a signature
(for few could master the ancient scripts) as well as to
put a tabu upon the object sealed.
The general propositions just enunciated involve some
archaeological corollaries specially germane to the sub-
ject of this book. The discoveries and inventions implicit
in metal-working are so abstruse and complex that
independent origin at several points — in the Old World
at any rate — is excluded as fantastically improbable;
knowledge of the essential techniques must, that is to
say, have been diffused from some centre. The uni-
formity of processes throughout the Ancient East and
Europe at the dawn of the Bronze Age affords some
positive justification for the diffusionist assumption (7).
It is, indeed, quite likely that miners and smiths con-
stituted distinct crafts or even castes, membership of
which implied initiation but conferred some degree of
immunity from the bondage of tribal custom. We must
then envisage the spread of the knowledge of metal as
a dual process: on the one hand we should expect a
distribution of metal objects by trade comparable to the
spread of European firearms among contemporary
savages. The diffusion of metallurgical knowledge, on
the other hand, must be associated with an actual spread
of initiates either as prospectors voyaging in quest of
ore, or as perambulating smiths seeking their fortunes
by plying their trade among barbarians, or as slaves or
others who have secured initiation in the original centre
or one of its offshoots, returning home. These two
processes must be kept distinct. The first may produce
a chalcolithic age in a given region; i.e. a few metal
objects may be imported and used side by side with
native tools of stone and imitated locally in flint or bone.
BRONZE AGE II
A true Bronze Age can only arise with the advent of
metallurgists or smiths.
Even so, the substitution of metal for stone tools and
weapons must inevitably be a gradual process. It will
take a long period of education and considerable com-
mercial organization before the peasant farmer finds it
cheaper to buy, say a bronze sickle, than to make one at
home out of flint. A long interval will accordingly elapse
after the introduction of bronze before it has finally
ousted stone. So in Egypt agricultural implements
continued to be made out of flint down to the New
Kingdom or for nearly two thousand years after metal
had become reasonably common. In Bronze Age settle-
ments and graves in Europe too even well-made stone
axe-heads (celts) occur. Not all stone tools therefore are
Neolithic, nor is their presence incompatible with a
Bronze Age date.
We must equally beware of attaching too great im-
portance to the use of pure copper. A regular supply of
tin involves, as we have seen, more extensive commercial
relations than the corresponding supply of copper. The
advantages of bronze would not in all circumstances
counterbalance its much higher price. During the
third millennium pure copper was largely used in
Mesopotamia though bronze was known even before
3000 B.C., in Egypt only copper was employed, and in
the Aegean bronze was rare and generally poor in tin
(i.e. with less than the standard 10 per cent.). In continen-
tal Europe a large number of tools and weapons of pure
copper may be assigned to a period anterior to the
local Bronze Age on account of their form and context.
This period may be justly styled a " Copper Age" or
"the Copper Age" with some qualification, such as "in
Hungary", At the same time, there are other objects of
12 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
pure copper or very poor bronze that none the less
belong to an advanced phase of the local Bronze Age,
The negative result of analysis in this case does not
indicate high antiquity but merely an interruption of the
tin supply in the region where the objects were cast —
an historical event explicable in economic or political
terms.
Again it is obvious that the regular use of metal would
not begin simultaneously everywhere. The mystery can
only be imparted to those in contact with its masters. It
will radiate slowly from the centre. It will reach only
those who have something to offer the smith or the
prospector; these can utilize their knowledge only in
so far as they control supplies of ore or can obtain the
requisite raw material by trade or political action.
'Actually metallurgy was being practised in Mesopo-
tamia and Egypt during the fourth millennium B.C., at
the beginning of the third it had been implanted in the
Aegean area whence it was diffused up the Danube
valley and along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts.
The Bronze Age in Bohemia and Britain begins about
2000 B.C., in Denmark about 1600, in Siberia perhaps
six centuries later. In the Pacific islands it never began
at all.
The earlier stages of this process in which the actual
discovery of metallurgy took place lie outside the scope
of this book, which is devoted primarily to the Bronze
Age of North-western and Central Europe. Nothing
comparable to the extraordinary civilizations that had
grown up by 3000 B.C. in the valleys of the Nile, the
Tigris-Euphrates and the Indus existed north of the
Alps till Caesar came with his legionaries. No descrip-
tion of the Oriental cultures and no sketch of their rise
could usefully be compressed within the compass of
BRONZE AGE 13
these pages. But we ask our readers to remember, when
picturing the lives of their barbarian ancestors who
reared round barrows on the Downs and lived in hut-
circles on the moors, that the Royal Tombs of Ur had
long been forgotten, and the Pyramids were already
hoary with age. The great temples of Karnak and the
palaces of Knossos are roughly contemporary with our
stone circles, and few, if any, of our hill forts can com-
pare in age even with the acropolis of Mycenae. But
though a worthy description is impracticable here, the
Oriental and East Mediterranean civilizations exercised
such a profound influence on Bronze Age Europe, in-
spiring and moulding her metallurgical traditions, that
their authors must be at least named if the sequel is to
be intelligible. Moreover, the chronology of illiterate
Europe rests entirely upon archaeological synchronisms
with cultural phases dated by the written records of
Egypt and Sumer.
On the banks of the Nile in Upper Egypt(g) a series
of graves, arrangeable by typological1 study in a regular
sequence, reveals the progress in industries and arts of
peasant communities down to the time, about 3400—
3100 B.C., when a king of Upper Egypt, traditionally
known as Menes, united the whole land under a single
sceptre. The record begins at a remote period, termed
the Badarian (after a site near Assiout(s)) when enough
rain still fell in Upper Egypt for big trees to grow
where now all is sand. That implies a climatic regime
approximating to that ruling in North Africa during the
European Ice Age, when the great belt of heavy cold
air (termed an arctic anticyclone) over our glaciers
diverted southward the rain-bearing Atlantic squalls
(cyclones). We are therefore at latest in what in Europe
1 Typology as used here is defined on p. 53 below.
14 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
would be the Mesolithic Age. But the Badarian villagers
on the Nile were already farmers enjoying a culture
comparable to that of the fellahin to-day: they could
make beautiful pots, grind vases out of hard stone,
weave linen, plait baskets, flake flint superbly, put a
glaze on stone beads and carve ivory into combs, pins
and figurines. They were also able to obtain shells from
the Red Sea and malachite, probably from Sinai, by
some sort of trade. They were even acquainted with
metallic copper since beads and a pin of the metal have
been found in their graves. The Badarians had been
accustomed to paint their eyes with malachite, a carbon-
ate of copper. The metal might have been discovered by
the reduction of a little of this paint dropped on to the
glowing ashes of a hearth. Still it would not be correct
to say that the Badarians were metallurgists or lived in
a copper age.
The same remark is true of the succeeding period,
termed Early Predynastic or Amratian, The communi-
ties are now bigger, trade relations have been extended
so that even lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, obsidian
from Armenia or Melos, coniferous woods from Syria
and gold from Nubia were available. Even copper
objects are more numerous than before, but all are of
perfectly simple forms that might easily have been ob-
tained by cold working in imitation of bone and flint
models.
Genuinely metallic types that presuppose a know-
ledge of casting are first found late in the third phase,
termed Middle Predynastic or Gerzean. But now
changes in pottery, dress and weapons denote the cul-
tural subjugation of Upper Egypt to a new power,
immediately centred in the unexplored Delta but very
possibly Asiatic in origin. The metal objects of the
BRONZE AGE 15
period, that are indeed very sparse, may be products
of a school of metallurgy created by the (unknown)
Early Predynastic inhabitants of Lower Egypt or
directly inspired by some external centre in Asia. Some
elements in Middle Predynastic culture certainly came
from the latter quartef . In any case the clash of native
African and Asiatic traditions caused a general spurt
in culture, mirrored in progress and specialization in
all the arts. At the same time accumulation of wealth
and its concentration in individual hands are marked
by the elaboration of some tombs and an increasing
range in the comparative wealth of the grave goods.
In the Late Predynastic or Semainian phase the dual
traditions traceable in Middle Predynastic times were
fused. Moreover continued accumulation of wealth
in a country, bereft of ore, building stone and timber,
rendered necessary and possible an extension and regu-
larization of trade, till Egypt was at last in contact
with another civilization that had grown up in the
Tigris-Euphrates valley. Concomitantly industry was
further specialized to the great benefit of most crafts,
though the pots of this period, being regular factory
products, are far less attractive than the more individual
creations of earlier times. Some favourably situated
villages grew into real towns, and the chief of one
of them, Abydos, that commanded one main caravan
route to the Red Sea and the East, was eventually able
to master the whole land to the Mediterranean coasts,
founding what is termed the First Dynasty (about
3100 B.C.).
From this point the written record supplements the
archaeological. We see the royal arms extended to the
copper mines of Sinai and then the colonization of
Byblos in North Syria to secure control of the cedars of
l6 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
Lebanon. Therewith we arrive at the Old Kingdom,
Dynasties III to VI, which witnessed the building of the
Pyramids, but eventually collapsed into anarchy through
internal exhaustion and Asiatic aggression.
~TKe country rose again under the Middle Kingdom,
Dynasties XI-XIII (2000-1780 B.C.), only to collapse
once more beneath the onslaught of the barbarian in-
vaders known as the Hyksos.
The greatest period in Egyptian history followed the
national revolt against the invaders led by the Seven-
teenth Dynasty and completed under the Eighteenth
(beginning 1580 B.C.). The Thothmes reconquer Syria
and Palestine; the Amenhoteps conduct diplomacy in
quite modern style with the kings of Babylonia, Assyria
and the Cappadocian Hittites, In alliance with the
latter the Rameses repel the assaults of the Philistines
and the Sea-Peoples from the North, some of whom at
least were Europeans. But eventually these barbarians
wrecked the Empire and incidentally ended the Bronze
Age in the Near East.
No such clear record is yet available of the rise of
civilization in Mesopotamia. The ancient records name
kings reigning for fabulous years before what the
Sumer ians termed the Flood . Remains of the pr ediluvian
civilization have in fact recently come to light at Ur and
aPUbaid in Sumer and at Kish farther north, covered
thickly by the clay left by a huge inundationdo. They
disclose already highly civilized communities living in
towns or at least large villages. The splendid painted
pottery from these levels connects the oldest culture of
the Mesopotamian plain with a great province covering
the whole Iranian plateau and extending eastward perhaps
to the Indus. Its best known representative is the "first
city" at Susa in Elamdo). The prediluvian culturecs),
BRONZE AGE 17
of unknown antiquity and antecedents, boasted all the
arts of Early Predynastic Egypt with the addition of
mature metallurgy. Copper was not only known at
Susa I, it was freely used for axe-heads and even mirrors
fashioned by casting.
In Mesopotamia, upon the eight feet of sterile clay
left by the Flood above the prediluvian houses, stand
the foundations of the oldest historical cities, built by a
literate people known to us as Sumerians. These folk,
distinguished by language and dress, lived in City
States, normally autonomous but each striving for, and
sometimes securing, the mastery over all the rest. Palaces
and graves recently uncovered at Kish reveal the ad-
vanced civilization ruling under the first dynasty to attain
to hegemony after the Flood, Even more startling are
the Royal Tombs recently explored at Ur and perhaps
in some cases even older than the historical First Dynasty
of Ur, dated round about 3100 B.C. By that date, in
any case, the Sumerians enjoyed a settled polity and had
attained a level of industrial skill far ahead of First
Dynasty Egypt. In particular they used metals to an
extent and with a skill never dreamed of on the Nile till
New Kingdom times. Egypt possessed abundant sup-
plies of good flint, and that material was used there
exclusively in agriculture and very generally by the
poorer classes as a whole till quite late. The alluvial
plain of Mesopotamia had nothing similar to offer its
occupants and so, the raw material for cutting tools
having to be imported in any case, the durable copper
really came cheaper than flint. That implied a depend-
ence on foreign trade even greater than Egypt's. The
variety of exotic substances found in Sumerian graves and
above all the discovery of seals, actually manufactured
in distant India, illustrate the success with which that need
*8 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
was met. Conversely, while most distinctive Egyptian
metal types are peculiar to the Nile valley, Sumerian
forms lie at the base of South Russian and Central
European metallurgy.
The early Sumerian period, thus inaugurated, is
often termed pre-Sargonic; for a well-defined era ends
when a Semitic prince, whose name has been simplified
to Sargon, made his city, Akkad or Agad£, supreme
throughout Mesopotamia. He is said even to have
reached the Mediterranean. After the collapse of his
empire, civilization largely stagnated in Iraq; in par-
ticular no fresh metal types were created. Historically a
new era is marked by the rise of Babylon to the hegemony
under Hammurabi's dynasty (First Dynasty of Babylon,
{ circa 2 100 B.C.). Thereafter Babylon remained the politi-
cal capital of an united Babylonia for close on fifteen
hundred years.
West of the "prediluvian" cultural domain began a
province, centred in Anatolia and once perhaps em-
bracing Crete, characterized by dark-faced carboniferous
pots imitating gourd vessels. Round about 3000 B.C.
the secrets of metallurgy began to reach this area rich
in ores, probably from Mesopotamia. About the same
time the local potter commenced producing a red ware
by baking his pots over a clear fire in an oxidizing
atmosphere. One branch of this culture then occupied
Cyprus (18), attracted no doubt by the metal wealth of
the island that has given its name to copper. Another
branch pushed into Thrace and Macedonia. The most
interesting, however, developed a higher civilization on
the hill of Hissarlik(3), a point on the Dardanelles that
commanded at once the sea ways from the Aegean to
the Black Sea, the Danube and the Caucasus and the
terminus of the land route from Mesopotamia across
BRONZE AGE 19
Asia Minor with its transmarine extensions into Thrace,
Macedonia and Central Europe. Out of a large village1
(known as Troy I) at this strategic point there arose
during the third millennium an important town termed
Troy II on whose ruins the Homeric Troy (Troy VI)
was later to rise.
The citadel of Troy II was girt with a strong wall of
stone surmounted by brick battlements. Within stood
palatial buildings of the so-called megaron1 type. The
citadel and its encircling walls were rebuilt twice so that
three structural phases are recognizable. The last of
these probably belongs already to Middle Aegean times
(see p. 21). Shortly after 2000 B.C. the city was razed
to the ground, but its defenders had found time to bury
many of their treasures. The latter escaped the eyes of
the invaders and were first rediscovered by H. Schlie-
mann between A.D. 1873 and 1879. Our knowledge of
Trojan metallurgy is almost entirely derived from these
hoards (17) which should belong to what is called the
Middle Aegean Period. After the sack the site was occu-
pied only by minor villages till, towards the middle of
the sixteenth century B.C., a new and larger city arose, the
Homeric Troy that the Achaeans sacked about 1200 B.C.
Metal-using civilization impinged upon Crete and
the Aegean islands from two quarters, Anatolia-Syria
and Egypt. Crete da) had already been occupied in
Neolithic times by people of Anatolian affinities. The
metal-using civilization termed Minoan begins rather
before 3000 B.C. with the advent of Nilotic immigrants,
possibly refugees flying from Menes when he conquered
the Delta. At the same time powerful influences and
very possibly immigrants from the East reached the
1 A "megaron" is essentially a long hall with a central hearth,
preceded by a pillared porch on the short side.
2-2
20 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
island, and Cretan metallurgy is largely based upon
Asiatic traditions. The life of the Minoan civilization
is divided into three main periods. Early, Middle and
Late Minoan (abbreviated E.M., M.M. and L.M.
respectively) each in turn subdivided into three phases
distinguished by the Roman numerals I, II, or III.
Already in Early Minoan times Crete enjoyed a
genuine urban civilization. The people lived largely by
maritime trade, even building their towns on barren
islets or headlands, quite unsuited to farmers but affording
excellent harbours.
During the same period the stoney little islands of the
Aegean (Cyclades), that had offered no sustenance to
Neolithic peasantsdo) but were rich in copper, emery,
marble, or obsidian, and afforded convenient halting-
places on voyages across the Aegean, were occupied by
prospectors from Anatolia. On them grew up a flourishing
maritime culture termed Early Cycladic(i6>. Its monu-
ments, strongholds girt with walls of stone and graves of
varied form, suggest a less refined and less pacific
civilization than the Minoan, but one in which metal-
lurgy flourished and where distinctive metal types were
created. The islanders were in regular commercial
contact with Crete, Troy and mainland Greece.
In the latter area an older layer of Neolithic peasants
was overlaid by groups of more industrial and mercantile
immigrants, allied to the islanders and to the Macedo-
nian wing of the Anatolians. These new-comers occupied
principally seaports and sites on land trade routes (14)
extending as far west as Levkasds). Their culture is
known as Early Helladic and in respect of metallurgy
was mainly dependent upon Troy and the Cyclades,
though the use of a glazed paint was probably derived
from Crete.
BRONZE AGE 21
The Minoan, Cycladic and Helladic cultures, sharing
in a common trade, were all in constant intercommuni-
cation. Hence it is possible to correlate the several
stages of culture in each area and to extend the Minoan
system to the whole Aegean world. Crete in particular,
being in regular touch with Egypt, the phases of Aegean
culture may be approximately dated in terms of solar
years. The period just surveyed, termed Early Aegean,
extends from about 3100 to 2100 B.C. On the islands
and in mainland Greece the beginning of the Middle
Aegean period is not very well defined, since no radical
changes took place before Middle Aegean II timesoa).
The Middle Minoan period in Crete, on the contrary,
witnessed the concentration of power and wealth in the
hands of princes ruling in the centre of the island
commanding the great road that linked the sea-routes
from Egypt with those to Greece and the Black Sea.
By M.M. II, Knossos, near the northern terminal of the
road, was the undisputed capital of the island. Here
rose frescoed palaces, often destroyed by seismic or
political cataclysms, but continually resuscitated down
to L.M. III. Sir Arthur Evans has rediscovered
Homer's broad Knossos, the seat of Minos, and the
" dancing-ground " laid out by Daedalus. And frescoes
on the palace walls depict the ritual games of bull-
grappling that inspired the legend of the Minotaur.
Towards M.M. II times Crete had so far mono-
polized Aegean trade that the Cyclades' prosperity
declined and many islands were deserted. At the same
time, Middle Helladic II1, a new folk, conveniently, if
1 Numbering the phase according to the contemporary Cretan periods.
Messrs Wace and Blegen, owing to the absence of any sharp break at a
point contemporary with the Cretan M.M. I, prefer to term this phase
M.H. I, while admitting its contemporaneity with M.M. II.
22 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
incorrectly, termed Minyans, gained the upper hand
on the Greek mainland and adjacent islands from Aegina
to Levkas. They were more martial and less industrial
than their Early Helladic predecessors, but far from
barbarians.
Then towards 1600 B.C, a Minoan prince gained a
footing at Mycenae on the Peloponnese. His remains and
those of his family were found by H. Schliemann in the
famous Shaft Graves, dug on the slope of the acropolis
and included within the city walls. Sir Arthur Evans
has, however, adduced convincing grounds for believing
that the prince's body had originally reposed in the
great beehive tomb, built into the hillside outside the
walls and known since the days of Pausanias as the
Treasury of Atreus, a tomb that Mr Wace dates some
three centuries later (L.H. Ill) and attributes to the
last monarch of a different dynasty,
In L.M. I and II Crete attained the zenith of her
power, the most grandiose phase of the palace of Knossos
belonging to L.M. II. During the same period the
Minoan civilization was extended to the mainland. A
whole series of stately beehive tombs along the western
coasts and at the head of gulfs facing south as far as
Volo in Thessaly and palaces adorned with frescoes in
Minoan style mark the seats of the Cretan dynasts.
This imperialist expansion overtaxed the island's
strength. At the beginning of L.M. Ill Knossos and
the other palaces were sacked and not rebuilt, though
the towns continued to flourish. The mainland, however,
progressed. Mycenae was now the capital of the Aegean
world as in Homer's lays. She was girt with a megalithic
wall of "Cyclopean" masonry as were Tiryns, Athens
and other citadels within which rose palaces of the
megaron plan, very different architecturally from the
BRONZE AGE 23
Cretan, though decked with frescoes of Minoan tech-
nique. A provincial variant of the Minoan culture,
termed Late Mycenaean, ruled all over the mainland
and extended to many of the islands and even Cyprus.
Trade was more extensive than ever, and even Myc$-
naean vases were exported to Anatolia, Syria, Palestine;"
Egypt and Sicily. But about 12506.0., when the
Egyptian records are already preoccupied with "unrest
among the Isles of the Sea", these peaceful relations
were broken off. The Mycenaean culture in a decadent
form, L.M. Ill b, however, persisted for a couple of
centuries and even spread to Macedonia. During this
period we find northern types of sword and other
indications of influences from beyond the Balkans. In
Macedonia even a barbaric pottery, apparently of
Hungarian antecedents, intrudes in and above the last
ruins of the plundered Mycenaean settlements.
The Iron Age in the Aegean begins about this point
without any complete break with late Mycenaean tradi-
tions, at least in Southern Greece and Crete. The metal
that now replaced bronze in the manufacture of cutting
implements had been used occasionally for that purpose
even in the fourteenth century. The Hittite records
show that it was then being manufactured in Kizwadana,
an unidentified locality under the control of the Cappa-
docian Hittites. By L.M. Ill b times there are traces
of iron-working in Macedonia, and soon after 1200 B.C.
it was generally practised in Asia Minor and then in
Crete and Greece.
Having now surveyed the civilized world of the
Ancient East, we can conclude this chapter with a
glance at the question, "Where did the revolutionary
discovery of metallurgy originate?" It is, of course,
theoretically possible that the properties of copper were
24 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
independently realized in Egypt and Hither Asia, or
even in illiterate Spain and Hungary, and that the
barbarians of Cornwall and Bohemia spontaneously hit
upon the alloy, known before 3000 B.C. in Sumer and
India. Practically, in the case of the Old World where
the first metal-using civilizations had such wide foreign
relations and were bound together by so many common
traits, no one, unprejudiced by the passions evoked by
a perverse diffusionism, will suggest that all the complex
processes involved were elaborated separately at two or
more comparatively adjacent points in Eurasia. Really
the question resolves itself into one of the comparative
claims of Egypt and the Asiatic cultural province desig-
nated "prediluvian".
It must be admitted and indeed insisted that by
3000 B.C. Egyptian and Sumerian metallurgy consti-
tuted two distinct schools. Any competent archaeologist
could distinguish, as our Chapter in will show, between
a proto-dynastic Egyptian celt, dagger or spear-head
and an equally early Sumerian specimen, to say nothing
of more specialized types such as pins or earrings. But
as we go back, the differences tend to vanish.
In the Nile valley the conditions for the rise of
metallurgy were admittedly fulfilled, even though no
supplies of ore were available locally (21). The copper
objects from Badarian and Early Predynastic graves, the
oldest samples of metal to which any sort of date can be
assigned, strongly suggest that the copper ore used as
eye-paint was in fact there reduced to the metallic state
and the product utilized. Yet nothing from these
periods proves that the process was applied deliberately
or systematically, still less that the properties of metal
were realized or employeddo). Only in Middle Pre-
dynastic times do we meet implements of any size or of
BRONZE AGE 25
a distinctively metallic character — the results of casting
in a mould. And even these are rare and sporadic.
Moreover, in the Middle Predynastic culture we en-
counter types, foreign to the earlier periods but common
at all times in Hither Asia. I may instance the pear-
shaped stone mace-head that replaces the Early Pre-
dynastic disk-shaped type, spouted vases and dark-on-
light vase-painting. Even under the early dynasties,
when metallurgy was fully understood and quite indi-
vidual types were created, flint remained in common use
for reasons already explained.
Now Egypt is exceptionally favoured from the ex-
cavator's point of view. It has long enjoyed a civilized
government; a delightful winter climate makes it the
resort of the wealthy of all Europe. The mighty stone
monuments that geographical circumstances enabled
the ancient Egyptians to erect and that climatic con-
ditions have conspired to preserve, have inspired the
less stupid of such visitors to serious excavations as a
diversion and encouraged the rest to subsidize profes-
sional diggers. Mesopotamia, on the other hand, remote,
inhospitable winter and summer, and long misruled by
a corrupt Old Turkey, has only been seriously explored
during the last ten years. Persia, even more inaccessible
and climatically forbidding, is closed to excavation by a
monopoly granted to an incompetent and bankrupt
nation. And in India the British Government was con-
tent to allow the ruins of ancient cities to be used as
ballast for railway lines. Under these circumstances it
is difficult to compare the prediluvian culture with the
predynastic or to gauge its origin, extent and antiquity.
Still its highland home is rich in metals including even
tin. And as far back as we can trace the culture, it was
associated with genuinely metallic and often highly
26 THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE
developed copper implements. Descending to the alluvial
plain, its authors would find copper cheaper to import
than flint.
Early Sumerian metallurgy, which seems descended
directly from the prediluvian, was certainly superior to
the contemporary Egyptian both in extent and in the
quality of its products. For example, in Sumer bronze
was known and core-casting regularly employed. The
marked superiority of Sumerian metallurgy over the
Egyptian, at the first moment when contemporary ob-
jects from the two countries can be compared, affords
some presumption in favour of the higher antiquity of
the Asiatic industry. The metal work of Middle Pre-
dynastic Egypt would in that case be inspired from Asia.
The force of this argument is, however, somewhat
diminished by persistent uncertainties as to the precise
dates of the First Dynasties in Egypt and Ur respectively
and by the fact that after the Second Dynasty Egyptian
civilization was on the whole, though not in metallurgy,
ahead of Sumerian. The latter objection is to some
extent discounted when we recall that the political
unification of Egypt placed the labour power of the
whole population at the disposal of Pharaoh for the
execution of monumental works, that facilities for ob-
taining stone were great and the conditions of the soil
more favourable to the preservation of delicate articles.
It must be recalled that Egypt was still without wheeled
vehicles though she could replace by magic images the
living victims immolated in the oldest Sumerian tombs.
Approaching the question in another way, we shall
find in the sequel that the majority of European metal
types, referable specifically to one or other of the Oriental
groups, go back quite unambiguously to prediluvian or
Sumerian models. Still most daggers in Western and
BRONZE AGE 27
Central Europe are inspired by peculiarly Egyptian
forms, traceable back to Middle Predynastic times. As
all specialized early dynastic forms are confined to Egypt,
the diffusion of the dagger type from the Nile must go
back to Middle Predynastic times. If Egypt was
diffusing metallurgical knowledge so early, the value
of the numerical preponderance of diffused Sumerian
types as evidence for the original centre of metallurgy is
weakened. And so the question must be left open.
CHAPTER II
METALLURGY AND TRADE
MINING AND SMELTING
ADETAILED account of the metallurgical processes em-
JL\ ployed in antiquity must be relegated to technical
works, but a short description of some aspects thereof is
desirable both to justify the assertions of the first chapter
and to make intelligible the sequel. As to mining, we
have already remarked that at first weathered surface
deposits of ore, even if poor, were exploited. In the case
of tin, supplies could be obtained from alluvial deposits
by washing as with gold. However, it is certain that
even in Europe before the end of the Bronze Age the
veins of ore were followed underground by means of
shafts and galleries many of which are well preserved
in the Austrian Alps (19).
The process of smelting, particularly in the case of sur-
face ores, consisting of oxides, silicates or carbonates —
the so-called oxidized ores — was comparatively simple.
Heating with carbon (charcoal) suffices to effect the
reduction and liberate the metallic copper. In the case
of some of the copper ores, found principally in deeper
workings, a preliminary roasting may be necessary to
produce artificially an oxidized ore. The reduction could
be quite well effected in a shallow clay-lined pit such as
was used in Japan last century (20), Ignited charcoal is
placed on the floor of the pit, and a conical pile of char-
coal and ore in alternate layers is heaped up over it, A
blast is applied through a clay nozzle when the mass
will be reduced in about an hour. The metal settles to
METALLURGY AND TRADE 29
the bottom of the hole. The slag and unburnt char-
coal is thereupon raked off, and the metal dragged out
in lumps when on the point of solidifying. The cakes of
raw metal from European "founders' hoards'1 display
under the microscope the peculiar structure caused by
breaking the metal when it was thus on the point of
solidifying. In the Tyrol remains of more elaborate
furnaces built into the hillside have been found.
Tin and lead can be obtained by the same methods
though the loss from volatilization is considerable. Lead
ores were probably valued at first for the silver they
contain. To purify the precious metal the process termed
cupellation must have been applied. The silver-lead
amalgam produced by simple reduction is strongly heated
in a blast of air whereby the lead is oxidized, the metallic
silver remaining at the bottom of the furnace or crucible.
For the production of the important alloy, bronze,
two processes were available. The ores of copper and
tin might be smelted together or the two metals fused
together. The former process may have been first em-
ployed. In the true Bronze Age, however, the extant
evidence points to a deliberate mixture of the two metals.
Another alloy used in antiquity was electrum, consisting
approximately of two parts gold ancT oneTpart silver. It
was used in Troy, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and
Hungary. Since the native gold of Transylvania, Pacto-
lus and elsewhere is strongly argentiferous, electrum
may well be a natural alloy.
The raw metal from the smelters was probably not
generally cast into ingots. The material from the bottom
of the furnaces was rather broken up into cakes of
convenient size before it had set hard. However, ingots
were sometimes at least cast. From Cyprus and Crete
we have a number of ingots of copper, probably Cypriote,
30 METALLURGY AND TRADE
cast in the form of a Minoan double-axe and sometimes
stamped with a character of the Minoan script. Similar
ingots are depicted among the tribute brought to
Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaohs, and one has been found
in Sardinia. In Central Europe copper was apparently
traded in the form of neck-rings or torques. Hoards
consisting exclusively of such torques, made of pure
copper, have been unearthed particularly between the
tin-producing region of Bohemia and the copper lodes
of Slovakia and the Alps (41 ).
CASTING AND MOULDS
The operations of the smith need more detailed
description to enable us to understand the peculiarities
of the metal objects that constitute such prominent
documents on Bronze Age civilization. The raw metal
was first melted in crucibles of clay. In Egypt these
crucibles, to judge by the tomb paintings, were heated
over an open fire. Actual crucibles have been found in
European sites. But these exhibit the effects of heat
only round the rim (20) and on the inside, so that we must
assume the use of a furnace similar to that employed in
Japan last century. The clay crucible was placed in a
hollow packed with charcoal; sticks of ignited charcoal
were laid upon it and these covered with lumps of
copper. On the application of a blast the metal would
melt and drip into the crucible. In either case a blast
was needed to secure adequate heat so that the smith
must have assistants. In Egypt down to the New King-
dom human lungs provided the current of air, and we
see parties of youths sitting by the furnace and blowing
down pipes! Thereafter leather bellows are depicted. The
wind was conducted into the fire through a clay nozzle.
Such blast pines are reeularlv found in European
METALLURGY AND TRADE
31
3
Fig. i. (i) Nilotic smith at work.
(2) Clay nozzle from pile-village of Morigen, Switzerland (after
Ischer).
(3) Egyptian goldsmiths (after de Morgan).
32 METALLURGY AND TRADE
villages of the Late Bronze Age, notably the Swiss
lake-dwellings (100), Velem Szent Vid and other industrial
settlements in Hungary (Fig. i, no. 2).
Simple objects, flat on one face, can be cast by pouring
the molten metal into a form, hollowed out in the ground
or carved on a block of stone (s). This is known as the
open hearth process. A number of stone moulds for
casting simple objects such as flat celts have been found
in Great Britain and o'ther countries. Moulds for flat
celts are peculiarly common in Scotland (Fig. 2, no. i).
Usually a more elaborate sort of mould was required.
Even for daggers (except the most primitive flat type),
spear-heads and palstaves a mould in at least two pieces
must be employed (s). A number of specimens have
come down to us from the Middle and Late Bronze Age
of Europe (Fig. 2, no. 2). The usual procedure was
to take two corresponding pieces of stone, generally
schist or sandstone, carefully rubbed flat and smooth on
one face each, and to carve on each piece the negative
outline of half the desired object. By combining the
two a " valve mould " is obtained whose internal hollow
is the exact negative of the object to be manufactured.
Of course it is essential to secure an exact correspondence
between the two valves and a stable union. That might
be ensured by dowelling the two halves together, but
often it was thought sufficient just to lash the two pieces
together; ribs are sometimes cut in the back of the
mould to give the thongs a better purchase.
When the valves have been fitted together liquid
metal is poured in through a channel with a funnel-like
mouth, specially cut for it in the mould. At least in the
case of large objects, like rapier blades, fine capillaries
running from the internal hollow to the edge must be
cut to allow the air to escape from the enclosed space.
METALLURGY AND TRADE
33
§
-a
8
J-
u
JS3
U
CBA
34 METALLURGY AND TRADE
Similar capillaries, in this case radiating from the inlet
tube like veins, are needed to allow the liquid metal to
spread evenly in casting in a valve mould large thin
plates. As the two valves never fitted exactly, a little
of the liquid metal will have spread into the join between
the two faces. This appears on the product as a thin
ridge or "seam" (Gussnaht) all round which, together
with the spur or "fount" left by the metal remaining
in the inlet channel, must be subsequently removed by
hammering and rubbing with sand. Some traces of the
seam are generally to be found on rough or rejected
metal tools. Among the latter are to be seen castings
spoilt through the slipping of the valves during the
process. The little ridges left by the vein-like capillaries
that served to ensure the rapid spread of the metal over
a thin surface might be retained as decorative elements
instead of being rubbed away.
More complicated moulds were needed for tools with
a socket for the shaft. Axe-heads of the modern type
with a shaft-hole could be produced with a two-valve
mould if a clay core was introduced where the shaft-hole
was to come. It was sufficient to provide a depression
at the bottom of the mould to keep the core in position.
There is a mould for a double-axe from Troy VI that
illustrates the arrangement. The manufacture of an
implement like a socketed spear-head or a socketed celt,
where the tube for the shaft follows the long axis of the
artifact and is essentially closed at one end, is more
difficult; for the metal must flow all round the core that
represents the socket. The core has therefore to be
suspended from its upper end so that the metal can pass
under it as well as round it. For other objects three- or
four-piece moulds must have been used. None such
have actually survived, but the position of the seams or
METALLURGY AND TRADE 35
flaws due to the slipping of one part of the mould show
how the several valves were arranged. Looped buttons
can be cast in a tripartite mould, one piece containing
the negative of the button top while two pieces with
the join at right angles to the face of the first section
provided the loop (Fig. 2, no. 5). Chains composed
of closed annular links required four valves joining
obliquely.
Nevertheless, except for quite simple implements,
stone or metal moulds were seldom used for the actual
casting. This was carried out rather by the cire perdue
(verlorener Form) process. The procedure is as follows.
A wax model of the desired object is first prepared.;
This is then dipped in a bath of clay of creamy con-
sistency so that it becomes coated all over with an exactly
fitting skin of clay which is allowed to dry on it. The
whole is then enveloped in thicker clay to protect it.
When this too has dried, the whole is heated so that the
wax. melts and runs out through an aperture left for the
purpose. Liquid metal is poured by the same channel
into the vacuum created. When the metal has cooled,
the clay of the mould must of course be broken to allow
of the extraction of the casting. Each mould can thus
serve for one casting only. Hence the archaeological
evidence for the use of the process in prehistoric times
is mainly inferential. Only a few fragments of the actual
moulds have survived. But one group of objects, repre-
senting the stock-in-trade of a Late Bronze Age smith
unearthed at St Ch£ly-du-Tarn (Loz&re) in France,
included a large lump of wax (4). From Egypt and
Mesopotamia textual evidence for the employment of
the cire perdue process is extant.
The cire perdue process sounds very complicated and
laborious. But really, once the technique has been
3-*
36 METALLURGY AND TRADE
acquired, the only part that required time and close
attention was the preparation of the wax model. This
could be greatly accelerated and simplified by casting
the model in a mould. In point of fact, while some stone
moulds of the types just described above were no doubt
directly employed for making the final bronze casting,
the majority of them, and probably all bronze moulds
(Fig. 2, no. 3), were used not for the casting proper
but for forming quickly the wax model. Models could
be turned out very readily with the aid of such moulds
and moreover could very easily be trimmed up and
embellished so as to yield an admirable model. Difficult
operations could be simplified by the use of this pro-
cedure since the model was always subject to adjustment
before being coated with clay. So, in the manufacture
of socketed celts, the core could be steadied during the
casting of the model by a wedge under its lower end ;
the crack in the wax left by this could easily be filled up
before the model was dipped in its clay bath. It is
possible too that the marvellous curvilinear patterns
that adorn Hungarian and Scandinavian bronzes were
engraved, not with hammer and chisel on the hard
bronze itself, but on the soft wax of the model.
The cire perdue process is also applicable to the casting
of thin objects over a core. Metal vessels can be made
by modelling a lump of clay to the required shape,
coating the lump with a thin layer of wax and then
enveloping the whole in a mantle of clay, leaving of
course in the outer cover a passage for drawing off the
wax and pouring in the metal. In the case of objects
such as vases the clay core would be broken up after the
casting, but in other cases it might be left in place.
The Scottish National Museum possesses a sword-
pommel which turns out on examination to be just a
METALLURGY AND TRADE 37
clay core sheathed in thin bronze. It was doubtless
prepared in the way just described.
Castings made on the open hearth or in a valve mould
had subsequently to be trimmed up by rubbing with
sand and hammering to remove the seam and other
roughnesses. The edge of cutting tools and weapons,
whether cast in stone moulds or by the cire perdue
process, must be sharpened by hammering which
served also to harden the metal. Hammering was more-
over the only method of producing sheet-metal known
to the ancients. It must be remembered that while
copper and gold can be worked with the hammer while
cold, bronze must be brought to a red heat before
hammering has much effect.
Wire, at least in Europe, was never made by " drawing ",
Gold and bronze wire of a round section might be made
by hammering out a rod of the metal and then rolling it
to round off the edges. Alternatively a narrow ribbon
of thin metal was twisted very tightly. A wire of tri-
angular cross-section might be made by hammering a
metal rod into a V-shaped groove. In Egypt there is
some evidence that gold wire was really manufactured
under the Middle Kingdom by drawing — forcing the
metal through fine holes.
For joining pieces of metal, rivets were used through-
out the Bronze Age, as to-day. The rivets had, of course,
to be of softer metal than the objects to be riveted, e.g
a bronze poor in tin. In the Aegean and Spain silvei
rivets were often employed for riveting bronze or coppei
daggers. In the Ancient East soldering was also regu-
larly used for joining pieces of gold and silver. The
Sumerians also employed lead as a solder for copper,
In barbarian Europe no such processes were known
during the Bronze Age. That incidentally debarred the
38 METALLURGY AND TRADE
European jeweller from using filigree work, gold wire
soldered on to a solid background so as to form a pattern,
a process very popular with Sumerian and Trojan gold-
smiths. Brazing, the union of two pieces by heating
the edges to be joined nearly to melting-point and
hammering, is also said to have been practised by
the Sumerians and was possibly known even to the
barbarians of continental Europe. The latter certainly
employed a process of casting-on (Anguss). When, for
example, it was desired to weld together two tubes,
they were placed end to end and the join surrounded
by a wax ring. This was then coated with clay and
replaced by a metal ring by the are -perdue process. The
hilts of daggers were sometimes cast to fit on to the
blades in the same way, the hilts being modelled in wax
fitting over the blades.
TRADE IN THE ANCIENT EAST
A sine qua non for the free use of metal whether on
the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia or on the boulder
clays of Denmark was, as we saw, regular foreign trade.
In the Ancient East trade by the third millennium B.C.
was probably conducted on very much the same lines
as native commerce in Asia to-day, save that coined
money was unknown. A collection of clay tablets found
in Cappadocia are inscribed with the business letters of
a group of bankers and merchants settled there in
connection with the metal trade. They give a lively
picture of the traffic between the metalliferous regions of
Asia Minor and the agricultural and industrial cities of the
Tigris-Euphrates plains. Great caravans of merchandise
travelled up and down the famous route that follows the
Euphrates. The commerce was financed by a system of
loans, secured by contracts many of which have come
METALLURGY AND TRADE 39
down to us. Other documents from Mesopotamia, also
written in the wedge-like characters called cuneiform,
refer to the importation of copper from the mountainous
region east of the Tigris and of metal and stdne from
Magan (probably Oman on the Persian Gulf), IjSyptian
records from the Old Kingdom onwards refer to ^fcpedi-
tions sent by the Pharaohs across the desert to Sifl|i for
the extraction of copper and turquoise. Contemp&rary
inscriptions mention the importation of cedar-woofepy
ship from North Syria. It was to secure this trade
the Egyptians established a colony or protectorate
Byblos. Sidney Smith (?) has pointed out how co
cial relations between the civilized States would havf£
involved actual transference of population as they do1
to-day. Craftsmen from foreign lands would gravitate to
cities where political or geographical circumstances
had created a market for their wares and skill and would
in turn add to the riches of their adopted home.
Archaeological data faithfully reflect these commer-
cial relations by the wide distribution of rare substances
or common types. Lapis lazuli beads were worn even
in prehistoric times from Baluchistan to Egypt. Obsidian
was used in the prediluvian settlements of Susa and
aFUbaid as in predynastic Egypt. In Late Predynastic
and protodynastic times we find a number of artistic
motives and architectural devices, at all times common
in Mesopotamia, abruptly and temporarily adopted in
Egypt as if in imitation of Sumerian originals. Con-
versely in the early Royal Tombs of Ur we find the
Egyptian sistrum represented. The most dramatic proof
of extensive commercial relations is however the dis-
covery in several pre-Sargonic sites in Mesopotamia of
seals, differing altogether in design and fabric from the
countless native seals, but identical with specimens
40 METALLURGY AND TRADE
unearthed in prehistoric sites in the Indus valley. This
is the earliest recorded instance of the transmission of
manufactures over such vast distances. The transference
of such instruments of commercial negotiation clearly
implies an extensive trade in other articles, such as
cotton, between the two distant regions. And so we see
that the caravans were already crossing the Syrian and
Persian deserts and merchantmen already furrowing the
Mediterranean and Erythraean Seas five thousand years
ago!
BRONZE AGE TRADE IN EUROPE
The conditions of trade in barbarian Europe would
naturally be somewhat different. Here there were as
yet no cities, but only villages of peasant farmers or
meeting-places for semi-nomadic herdsmen. While such
had little but slaves to offer the civilized folk of the
Ancient East, the tin of Tuscany and Cornwall, the
gold of Transylvania and Ireland and above all the
amber of Jutland and East Prussia^) might well find a
market in the East Mediterranean world. It is signifi-
cant that the first continental centres where metal came
into use lie either in the vicinity of such deposits or
along routes leading thereto. Relations with the East
Mediterranean centres of metallurgy are demonstrated
not only by the obvious derivation of most early Euro-
pean metal objects from ancient Oriental models, but
also by their association with Egyptian or Aegean
manufactures such as glazed^eads or, in Central Europe,
Mediterranean shells.
The intimacy and wide extent of commercial relations
between the several parts of Europe during the Bronze
Age is illustrated by the number of types common to a
wide area and by the diffusion of stray examples of types,
METALLURGY AND TRADE 4!
specialized in a particular area, far beyond their primary
habitat. Thus at the beginning of the Bronze Age the
same types of dagger were in. use in Eastern Spain,
Brittany, Great Britain, Upper Italy, Czechoslovakia,
Southern Germany and Eastern France. The peculiar
weapon known as the halberd (p. 79) was common to
Upper Italy, Spain, Ireland and Central Germany.
Direct interchange of goods is demonstrated by the
occurrence sporadically in Wales, Cornwall, Brittany,
Central Germany and Denmark of a type of gold col-
lar, termed a lunula, common only in Ireland and
Scotland (57). Again a form of battle-axe, native to Hun-
gary, is represented by stray specimens from Bavaria,
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Silesia, Poland, and the Uk-
raine. Axe-heads of types characteristic of Britain and
Italy respectively have been found side by side in
Sweden.
It is therefore plain that even manufactured articles
were traded between the various communities of Euro-
pean barbarians, to say nothing of substances like arnber
and jet. But it must be noted that the "communities"
just referred to are more than geographical districts, and
the "types" that help to define them have other func-
tions to fulfil in the archaeologist's scheme. We must
therefore diverge here to define a "culture".
DEFINITION OF A CULTURE
During the Bronze Age, as in the preceding period,
Europe was divided up among a multiplicity of distinct
communities or peoples. These may be distinguished
from one another by burial rites, architecture, art and
the types of tools, weapons, vessels and ornaments they
used. The distinctive metal, bone, stone and pottery
42 METALLURGY AND TRADE
types (artifacts), regularly found associated1 in graves
and settlements over a given geographical area, together
with the peculiarities of the domestic and funerary
structures in which they occur, constitute what is called
a culture. In a culture thus defined there is good reason
to recognize the material expression of that community
of traditions which distinguishes a people in the modern
sense.
Types, therefore, are symbols of cultural groups and
their relations, but also, as we shall see, indicators of
relative age. This dual function is not without incon-
venience; for a culture, like the people it represents, is
not static but can move about. It is therefore well to
ask in any given case whether the appearance of a
specific type in a region outside its original home is due
to trade or migration. In the first case its appearance in
the new region will serve to establish a synchronism
with the home area; in the alternative this is not guaran-
teed; for a conservative people coming into a progressive
area may bring with them and retain old-fashioned types.
To answer the question the following considerations
are helpful. When a culture moves bodily, i.e. when
the whole complex of types, fashions and habits spreads,
into an area where the said forms of tools and weapons,
artistic conventions and burial rites had not previously
been generally current, we must admit that we are
dealing with a migration. That might conceivably be a
slow process throughout which some or all the types
remained without material modification. In any case,
the more intimate and imponderable traits of a culture,
such as pottery and burial rites that could hardly be
1 Objects are said to be associated when they are found together
in circumstances indicative of contemporary use, e.g. as the furniture of a
single burial or in the ruins of a single hut.
METALLURGY AND TRADE 43
traded and would rarely be imitated and that only by
immediate neighbours, will move as much as portable
commodities like metal types. The reader will, moreover,
doubtless concede that the supersession of a more
practical type, like the shaft-hole axe, by an inferior
one, such as the socketed celt, can hardly be explained
by the external relation of trade or neighbourly imita-
tion but implies something deeper such as conquest or
immigration.
Conversely when stray objects properly belonging to
one culture are found in the area of another associated
with types proper to the latter, we are dealing with
"external relations". Trade is the simplest and most
natural explanation for the appearance of a Hungarian
axe in North Germany or an Irish ornament in Den-
mark, but it is always possible that the axe was dropped
by a Hungarian raider or the lunula looted from Ireland
by a Danish pirate.
HOARDS
As a result of the extensive trade of the Bronze
Age and its peculiar conditions, we have a class of
closed finds very rare in previous epochs. In addition
to grave furniture and relics from settlements we now
encounter what are called * * hoards " (4) . These are groups
of implements, ornaments or vessels buried together
in the earth. Sometimes hoards have been enclosed in
a vessel; occasionally there are traces of a sack or leather
bag, but naturally such receptacles have seldom sur-
vived. Hoards are of various kinds : some appear to be
just the personal possessions of an individual or a
household and may be termed "domestic hoards".
Such consist of a few tools, weapons and ornaments,
comprising as a rule only one specimen of each type
44 METALLURGY AND TRADE
and normally showing signs of use. They have probably
been buried by their owner in time of danger or while
he was travelling and never retrieved so that their sur-
vival is an indication of the owner's misfortune. Domestic
hoards may be regarded as closed finds guaranteeing
the contemporary use of all the articles deposited to-
gether. They are thus valuable for synchronizing types,
but otherwise of no special interest.
Objects found together at the foot of a rock or a tree
or in a spring or a swamp, may sometimes at least
represent offerings made to a divinity supposed to in-
habit the spot(8i). They are accordingly termed "votive
hoards " and in general provide no guarantee of the
contemporary use of the objects comprised in them.
The remaining hoards belong to traders and normally
contain several examples of each type of tool, weapon
or ornament. In the Early Bronze Age the traders'
hoards consist almost entirely of new or half-finished
articles. Some at least seem to have belonged to travel-
ling tinkers, bartering metal products which they were
prepared to finish off on the spot to suit the taste of the
customer. So some Central German hoards contain a
number of dagger- or halberd-blades to which the
merchant would fit hilts as required. The same hoards
often contain amber beads, showing that their depositors
were engaged in the amber trade. In the Late Bronze
Age some of the traders had begun to specialize in
particular lines, and accordingly we find hoards con-
sisting exclusively of swords, sickles, or vases as the
case may be. But even in the Early Bronze Age there
are hoards composed entirely of ingots of raw copper in
the form of torques.
The contents of the foregoing commercial hoards in
all probability were in contemporary use. That is not,
METALLURGY AND TRADE 45
however, true of another group of hoards, very common
in the Late Bronze Age, that seem in some cases to have
been left by a class of trader. They are characterized by
the presence of old and broken tools, obviously scrap
metal collected for remelting, and often too of metal-
lurgical tools, moulds and ingots of raw metal; such are
termed "founders' hoards " to distinguish them from
ordinary traders' hoards. The distinction is vital since
the objects included in them may be of very different
date, being in fact any old pieces of scrap metal. Yet
some such hoards probably belong to gangs of travelling
tinkers who went round the countryside repairing broken
tools and collecting scrap metal at a time when the
demand was peculiarly intense. Others are so large that
they must represent the stock of a village smithy buried
at a moment of danger or of a station in the international
metal trade.
The accepted explanation of traders' hoards is that
they were buried by the travelling merchant, when he
saw himself threatened by some danger, with the inten-
tion of reclaiming them when the peril was past. And
in point of fact when plotted on a map, they are
seen to lie along natural routes and to be thickest just
where danger might be expected, for instance on the
frontier of two cultural provinces. Hence a multitude
of hoards, whether commercial or domestic, is anything
but a sign of prosperity. It was rather in times of unrest
that valuables had to be entrusted to the preservation of
the earth. So the majority of hoards of Roman coins,
unearthed in France and Scotland, are shown by their
dates to have been buried during reigns when it is
known that those lands were harried by civil war or
barbarian raids.
46 METALLURGY AND TRADE
TRADE ROUTES
With the aid of maps showing the distribution of
contemporary hoards and of individual types, found
isolated or in other closed finds, it is possible to plot
out in some detail the main arteries of the European
economic system. Of all the commercial highways thus
disclosed, the amber route (23) connecting the Baltic and
the Adriatic was the most important. The ways, that
diverged slightly at different periods, are clearly marked
by amber ornaments, datable by their associations in
graves and hoards. From Jutland the fossil resin was
transmitted, during the Early Bronze Age, up the
Elbe to Bohemia and thence across the Bohmer Wald
to the Upper Danube at Linz or Passau. An early
branch route, however, followed the Saale valley through
Thuringia (where there are important salt deposits) to
the head-waters of the Main and then reached the Upper
Danube over the Prankish Jura. Thence in either case
the Inn was followed to the foot of the Brenner. The
traders used this pass to bring their goods by way of the
Adige to the Po valley and the head of the Adriatic.
The large number of tools and weapons of Italian
pattern found along the amber route show that the
inhabitants of Upper Italy played an important part as
intermediaries in the trade. Still the quantities of amber
found in tombs in Greece from 1600 B.C. on leave no
doubt that the Aegean market was already open. At
the same time Bohemia was a very important agency, so
much so indeed that its inhabitants may be said to have
controlled the northern end of the route. The principal
medium of barter used in the actual vicinity of the
deposits during the Early Bronze Age was a gold ear-
ring or lock-ring of a type originating immediately in
METALLURGY AND TRADE 47
Hungary and perhaps made of Hungarian gold; such
ornaments have been found in very considerable num-
bers in Jutland as well as in Bohemia and Saxo-Thurin-
gia. It looks as if the people of the last two regions
kept to themselves the bronze work of the South and
bartered to the Danish natives only the gold they got
from Hungary in exchange for tin.
During the Middle Bronze Age the western branch
of the central amber route along the Saale came into
greater prominence, and a loop way was introduced as
an alternative, following an old hill trackway across
Thuringia to the Rhine near Mainz, then running up-
stream to the mouth of the Neckar, and traversing that
gap to reach the Upper Danube near Augsburg.
Very possibly the East Prussian amber deposits were
being tapped even during the Early Bronze Age. A
series of hoards and stray bronzes, mostly of Saxo-
Thuringian pattern, can be traced across Eastern Ger-
many and Poland to converge near the mouth of the
Vistula. Though the hoards of this date do not contain
amber, they clearly denote a trade in Saxo-Thuringian
bronzes which can only have been exchanged for East
Prussian amber. The regular and extensive exploitation
of the latter deposits, however, dates only from a late
phase of the local Bronze Age, overlapping with the
Early Iron Age in Austria. At that date the material
was carried up the Vistula to its first elbow at Torun,
thence to the Oder near Glogau and so across Silesia to
the Glatz Pass. Thence the March valley was followed
to the Danube, Thereafter the exact course of the route
is obscure, but it seems to have traversed Styria and
Carniola to reach the head of the Adriatic,
Other routes on a smaller scale have been worked
out in limited areas. A glance at the map of hoards,
48 METALLURGY AND TRADE
classified by periods appended to Behrens' Bronzezeit
Sttddeutschlands, will give a good idea of what can be
determined. On the other hand, the map of hoards
in D^chelette's Manuel tells one very little, because
all hoards are shown by the same symbol without
distinction of age,
THE CLIMATE OF THE BRONZE AGE
Intercourse during the Bronze Age was facilitated by
the climatic conditions then ruling over our continent^).
While the earlier part of the New Stone Age had been
wetter, though warmer, than the present, drier con-
ditions set in towards the close of that period and were
intensified during the Bronze Age. The result of this
sub-boreal phase, as climatologists term it, was that
tracts that are to-day naturally wooded became park-
lands or, in extreme cases, open heath or steppers). As
the primeval forest, dangerous to traverse by reason of
the bears and wolves it sheltered, and difficult to clear
with expensive bronze axes, presented to our forefathers
the most serious obstacle to settlement and free move-
ment, the dry period was to most Europeans a climatic
optimum. In some parts of the North European plain,
however, the drought may have been so great as to be
incompatible with sedentary agriculture, thus pro-
moting popular migrations. In Ireland and large tracts
of Great Britain, on the contrary, it is excessive wind and
moisture that impedes the growth of timber. Here,
therefore, the sub-boreal epoch was certainly a forest
phase; to it belongs the upper layer (there is often an
older one of Mesolithic Age) of tree trunks and stools
discovered in our peat-mosses. In these islands, there-
fore, the sub-boreal dryness had little effect upon the
area available for settlement. Only the dry uplands
METALLURGY AND TRADE 49
were really thickly populated, and even the trade routes
avoided as far as possible the wooded valleys unless a
navigable river flowed along them.
VEHICLES AND SHIPS
The commercial intercourse, essential to the very
existence of a Bronze Age, was expedited by a series of
inventions. Perhaps the most revolutionary was the
harnessing of animal motive power, the first step in the
emancipation of mankind from the burden of crushing
physical labour that has led to the steam engine and the
petrol motor. Neolithic man possessed oxen and other
tame beasts, but there is no conclusive evidence that he
ever set them even to drag his plough ; when he travelled
he and his wife must carry the household goods as
among the Australian aborigines to-day. But very
early in the Bronze Age of the Ancient East the ox had
been yoked to the plough and set to work in the fields,
and even in Europe, by an early phase of the same
period, representations of an ox-drawn plough were being
carved on the rocks of the Ligurian Alps.
On sandy deserts or open grass-lands the same animal
could be harnessed to draw loads on runners.1 Effective
use of the animal's tractive powers, however, involved
the discovery of the wheel. Therewith mankind set foot
on the road that led to the motor car. The earliest
wheeled vehicles known as yet have recently been
brought to light in tombs at Kish and Ur dating from
before 3000 B.C.(S). The wheels are clumsy affairs, just
three solid pieces of wood, shaped to segments of a
circle, clamped together and tyred with leather, that
1 There is some very uncertain evidence from Finland for the use of
a sleigh, drawn presumably by reindeer or dogs, even in Mesolithic
times.
48 METALLURGY AND TRADE
classified by periods appended to Behrens' Bronzezeit
SttddeutschlandS) will give a good idea of what can be
determined. On the other hand, the map of hoards
in D^chelette's Manuel tells one very little, because
all hoards are shown by the same symbol without
distinction of age.
THE CLIMATE OF THE BRONZE AGE
Intercourse during the Bronze Age was facilitated by
the climatic conditions then ruling over our continent^).
While the earlier part of the New Stone Age had been
wetter, though warmer, than the present, drier con-
ditions set in towards the close of that period and were
intensified during the Bronze Age. The result of this
sub-boreal phase, as climatologists term it, was that
tracts that are to-day naturally wooded became park-
lands or, in extreme cases, open heath or steppe (25). As
the primeval forest, dangerous to traverse by reason of
the bears and wolves it sheltered, and difficult to clear
with expensive bronze axes, presented to our forefathers
the most serious obstacle to settlement and free move-
ment, the dry period was to most Europeans a climatic
optimum. In some parts of the North European plain,
however, the drought may have been so great as to be
incompatible with sedentary agriculture, thus pro-
moting popular migrations. In Ireland and large tracts
of Great Britain, on the contrary, it is excessive wind and
moisture that impedes the growth of timber. Here,
therefore, the sub-boreal epoch was certainly a forest
phase; to it belongs the upper layer (there is often an
older one of Mesolithic Age) of tree trunks and stools
discovered in our peat-mosses. In these islands, there-
fore, the sub-boreal dryness had little effect upon the
area available for settlement. Only the dry uplands
METALLURGY AND TRADE 49
were really thickly populated, and even the trade routes
avoided as far as possible the wooded valleys unless a
navigable river flowed along them.
VEHICLES AND SHIPS
The commercial intercourse, essential to the very
existence of a Bronze Age, was expedited by a series of
inventions. Perhaps the most revolutionary was thej
harnessing of animal motive power, the first step in the
emancipation of mankind from the burden of crushing ,
physical labour that has led to the steam engine and the
petrol motor. Neolithic man possessed oxen and other
tame beasts, but there is no conclusive evidence that he
ever set them even to drag his plough ; when he travelled
he and his wife must carry the household goods as
among the Australian aborigines to-day. But very
early in the Bronze Age of the Ancient East the ox had
been yoked to the plough and set to work in the fields,
and even in Europe, by an early phase of the same
period, representations of an ox-drawn plough were being
carved on the rocks of the Ligurian Alps.
On sandy deserts or open grass-lands the same animal
could be harnessed to draw loads on runners.1 Effective
use of the animal's tractive powers, however, involved
the discovery of the wheel. Therewith mankind set foot
on the road that led to the motor car. The earliest
wheeled vehicles known as yet have recently been
brought to light in tombs at Kish and Ur dating from
before 3000 B.C.(S). The wheels are clumsy affairs, just
three solid pieces of wood, shaped to segments of a
circle, clamped together and tyred with leather, that
1 There is some very uncertain evidence from Finland for the use of
a sleigh, drawn presumably by reindeer or dogs, even in Mesolithic
times.
CBA
50 METALLURGY AND TRADE
turned with the axle. Otherwise the main outlines of
later cars are clearly foreshadowed. The draught animals,
asses or oxen, were harnessed on either side of a pole
fixed to the middle of the fore axle. They were guided
by reins which passed through a double ring or terret,
fixed to the chariot pole. Light two-wheeled chariots
are little, if at all, later than these four-wheeled carts. A
model cart from the Indus valley dates from the third
millennium, while by that time wheeled vehicles were also
known in Crete, as is shown by a clay model of M.M, I
date. Even in Spain there are quaint rock-paintings,
representing a wheeled cart, that may date back to the
Copper Age. In Egypt, however, wheeled vehicles
were apparently unknown before the end of the Middle
Kingdom. Thereafter they were introduced by the bar-
barian invaders known as the Hyksos. About the same
time the two-wheeled chariot drawn by horses was
adopted in the Aegean area. In the Minoan and Myce-
naean chariots the axle is under the body of the car,
whereas in contemporary Egyptian vehicles it was in
front(26>. Whether wheeled vehicles were known north
of the Alps during the earlier part of the Bronze Age
is still uncertain. By the middle of that period bridle-
bits furnish, as we shall see, evidence of the subjugation
of the horse, and pendants in the form of a wheel imply
a knowledge of that device.
While on the topic of the wheel we must mention
another very different application of the invention, the
potter's wheel (a?). All Neolithic vessels have been built
up by hand, aided only by a leaf or mat on which the
lump of clay might stand, and smoothing tools of wood
or bone. By Old Kingdom times, however, the Egyp-
tians were utilizing a pivoted disc that would revolve
readily as the pot was being shaped. It is sometimes
METALLURGY AND TRADE 51
called the tournette. But by 3000 B.C. Sumerian potters
were already using the true wheel that will spin fast.
The lump of soft clay is placed on the centre of, or on
a tray connected by a sort of axle to the centre of, a
horizontal wheel. The latter can be made to rotate
rapidly by the potter's foot or by an assistant. A lump
of clay of the proper consistency thus set spinning almost
automatically assumes a cylindrical form; all the potter's
hand has to do is to give the gyrating mass the required
contours. By the use of this device ten or twenty vessels
can be modelled, and that more symmetrically, in the
time required for building up one by free hand. On
the other hand, with the adoption of the wheel, pottery
tends to become a factory product and to lose much of
its individuality.
Going back in the East to at least 3000 B.C., the
potter's wheel reached Crete and Troy II by M.M. I
times (from which dates the earliest evidence too for
the wheeled vehicle in the Aegean). Soon after the
device crossed to mainland Greece. But farther north
and west pots continued to be made exclusively by the
free hand till late in the Iron Age. There is, however,
evidence that a cognate device, the lathe, was in use in
Britain by the middle of the local Bronze Age (see p. 1 8 9).
Parallel to the acceleration of land transport by the
use of the wheel went a great expansion of maritime
intercourse. Even Mesolithic man had been able to
venture on the sea in some sort of craft so as to reach
the island of Oransay, and the immense voyages of the
Polynesians in improved (top-straked) dug-outs, show
what could be accomplished without the use of any
metal tool. But no true ships certainly antedate the
copper axe and chisel. Even before the union of the
lands in one kingdom, the predynastic Egyptians
4-2
52 METALLURGY AND TRADE
depicted on their vases quite big vessels with two cabins
and propelled by as many as fifty oars. These boats
seem to have grown out of a small raft made of bundles
of papyrus lashed together, but their sides were probably
already made of planks of Syrian timber tied together
like the original papyrus bundles. At the same time
another type of vessel with a very high prow, only
known at first from Egyptian monuments, had grown
up on the Persian Gulf and the Erythraean Seado).
These were sailing ships, so that the dwellers on those
coasts had already harnessed the winds as their con-
temporaries on shore had subdued the strength of
ox and ass. This is another mechanical invention at-
tributable to the Bronze Age.
In the Aegean (12), ships, related to the high-prowed
Erythraean type but equipped with fixed rudders, are
depicted from Early Minoan times onwards. Probably
it was hence that hardy mariners sailed beyond the
Pillars of Hercules whose ships provided the models
for Scandinavian boat-builders. The latters* products
have been depicted on rock-carvings in Southern Swe-
den. In any case the Egyptian, Aegean and Syrian
ships of the third millennium were certainly capable of
crossing the Mediterranean. The diffusion of megalithic
tombs along the coasts of Portugal, France, Ireland and
Scotland to Scandinavia may reasonably be regarded as
proof that they also faced the Atlantic and the North
Sea. And indeed Danish amber and English jet were
reaching the western coasts of the Mediterranean even
during the Copper Age. So it is fairly certain that
maritime intercourse between Scandinavia, the British
Isles and the Iberian Peninsula supplemented the great
transcontinental land route from the North to the
Mediterranean throughout the Bronze Age.
METALLURGY AND TRADE 53
WRITING, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
The other inventions incidental to international com-
merce need not be described here in detail. The necessity
for contracts and accounts no doubt gave an impetus
to the development of writing. Many documents written
on clay tablets from Mesopotamia and Crete bear wit-
ness to this use of writing. As mastery of the art was the
accomplishment of a few " scribes ", the average corre-
spondent, being unable to sign his name, would instead
impress upon the soft clay a seal bearing a distinctive
emblem, originally perhaps his guardian animal or
totem.
A system of metrology was equally needed for trade.
Various standards were used by the different civilizations
of the Ancient East. In continental Europe have been
found a number of symbolic double-axes, apparently
Copper or Early Bronze Age in date. On being placed
on the scales, it is found that the weights of such are
interrelated, all being multiples of an Asiatic unit termed
the mina. Late in the Bronze Age weights of stone and
Fead have been found in the Swiss lake-dwellings. In
form they are quite like modern weights with a little
loop for suspension; they too correspond to multiples
of a
TYPOLOGICAL CHRONOLOGY
The intimacy of the subsisting commercial relations
makes the correlation and synchronization of deposits
from different parts of Europe far easier during the
Bronze Age than in the preceding New Stone Age. The
types of tools, weapons and ornaments, current in our
continent, did not remain constant for any length of
54 METALLURGY AND TRADE
time as they had in the Orient. They were rapidly
modified in response to new inventions and changes of
fashion. In the case of some tools and weapons the
changes take place in a continuous and regular order
in one direction, illustrating progressive advances, just
as improvements are incorporated in each year's new
model of, say, an Austin car. Thus the celts or axe-heads
are modified along several divergent lines till all con-
verge again upon the socketed celt. Similarly the
triangular dagger grows into a short dirk, then a rapier
and eventually a cut-and-thrust sword.
When the progressive improvement of a tool can
thus be represented as a series of stages, we have what
is termed a " typological series "(28). The presumption is
that the more perfect types are later than the cruder
ones, so that such a series would have a direct chrono-
logical value. This assumption is not, however, neces-
sarily justified; for degeneration is as much a fact as
evolution. A typological series can only be accepted as
representing a chronological sequence when the direc-
tion of evolution has been tested by the independent
dating of at least two stages. Moreover, the more
rudimentary types naturally tend to persist side by side
with their descendants. Hence while an advanced type
indicates a relatively late date, a more rudimentary
one is no such sure sign of antiquity. If you see a
1930 model Austin in a garage, you are sure that the
year is 1930 or later; a 1924 model is no sure
proof that you have been transported back to that
year.
In several parts of continental Europe it has been
possible to construct typological series illustrating the
development of the celt, the dagger and sword, the
spear-head, the razor, the safety-pin, etc., and to
METALLURGY AND TRADE 55
synchronize the several stages in one series with corre-
sponding stages in the rest. This gives a sequence of
periods defined by contemporary types. Montelius, a
Swede, who first elaborated this method of establishing
the relative chronology of barbarian Europe, recognized
six periods in Scandinavia. It is claimed that in a large
number of closed finds1 of say Period III, only a small
minority of the types would belong to Periods II or IV
and none at all to I or V.
Within the area served by European trade the several
stages, distinguished typologically in the different
provinces, can be synchronized, and we thus obtain a
relative chronology, based on typology, valid for the
whole of Europe. On these principles we can easily
distinguish everywhere within the economic system
three main periods which we term the Early, Middle
and Late Bronze Ages. The last period should close
with the beginning of the first Iron Age or Hallstatt
period in Austria, Switzerland and South Germany, but
actually in Great Britain, Scandinavia and Hungary the
arrival of iron was belated so that we have a prolongation
of the Bronze Age in such areas.
While the tripartite division above indicated is
accurate enough for the present study and is indeed as
minute as can be applied in practice to Europe as a
whole, much finer divisions have been established by
local specialists for restricted areas. Montelius, as noted,
distinguished six periods for Scandinavia (generally
represented by Roman numerals) of which the last three
overlap with the Hallstatt Iron Age farther south.
Sophus Mliller(29) identified twice as many in Denmark,
P. Reinecke(3o> divides the pure Bronze Age in South
Germany into four periods, lettered A to D, followed by
1 See note on p. 42.
56 METALLURGY AND TRADE
a phase he terms Hallstatt A, in which iron had never-
theless not penetrated beyond the Alps. Kraft (43), who
follows Reinecke, therefore terms his Hallstatt A
" Bronze Age E". The Early and Late Bronze Ages
of Britain were each divided into two periods by
Montelius<59), giving five in all. British archaeologists
are, however, agreed that this subdivision cannot be
carried through in practice and have further observed
that the first marked gap in our Bronze Age comes at
the beginning of what should be the Late Bronze
Age (55) ; the Middle period is with us always vague and
ill-defined. In France D£chelette(4) distinguished four
periods, but these1 are discordant with Reinecke's
Central European system which, for reasons explained
below, must set the standard.
Any typological division is necessarily somewhat
arbitrary and must be used with due caution. It is
plainly applicable only to regions forming part of a
single economic system, so that the interchange of goods
and the spread of ideas is rapid and regular. The systems
upon which our tripartite division is based were devised
for countries lying along the central amber trade route
(p. 46) where most of the leading types were evolved.
We shall meet serious difficulties in applying it to other
regions, such as England, which participated only in-
directly or not at all in Scandinavian, Central European
and North Italian progress. In the case of Spain,
relations with the rest of continental Europe seem to
have been broken off during the Early Bronze Age, and
types of the Middle period are totally lacking. It is,
therefore, likely that Early Bronze Age types remained
1 On his Plate III (Period III) i and 10 are Reinecke B,and 2, 5, 1 1,
14, 1 6, 19 and 20 Reinecke C, therefore all Middle Bronze Age; while
3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13 and 15 are Late Bronze Age, Reinecke D.
METALLURGY AND TRADE 57
current in the Peninsula long after they had gone out of
fashion in Central Europe. Trade between Western
Europe and Russia only became effective in the latest
Bronze Age. All the older types are virtually absent,
but that by no means implies that the vast area was
depopulated from the end of the Stone Age. Similarly
only a few celts and daggers of Early Bronze Age type
are known from Denmark because there a belated Stone
Age persisted. One or two little ornaments of Early
Bronze Age type from late Stone Age graves demon-
strate this over lap (3).
Again a type, not clearly imported and datable in its
place of origin, can only be invoked as dating a deposit
if the type in question was in effective use, and so
susceptible of evolutionary modification, in the culture
to which the deposit belongs. For example, in Hungary
" celts " were seldom used for axe-heads, the normal
axe-head having a hole for the shaft as in our modern
tool. Accordingly the celt in Hungary was never im-
§ roved as in other parts of Europe by the growth of
anges, wings, and then a stop-ridge. The flat celt
remained in vogue, but its occurrence here is no indica-
tion of an Early Bronze Age date.
A further defect of typological chronology is the
difficulty of recognizing what may be called "retarda-
tion0, when synchronizing different provinces. On the
theory, each improvement in the typological series
originated at one point and quickly spread thence
throughout the economic system. But there is no
guarantee that the new type should be traded in all
directions or find immediate acceptance everywhere.
On a rigid application of the typological method all
deposits containing types belonging to the same phase
should be contemporary. Yet there are indications that
58 METALLURGY AND TRADE
the Late Bronze Age types evolved in Central Europe
(Upper Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Southern Germany)
were only introduced into Britain and Hungary as the
result of migrations that may have been quite gradual.
Yet the scheme offers no means of checking the possible
delay thus involved.
ABSOLUTE CHRONOLOGY
The foundation of the European Bronze Age in,
and its continued connections with, the Aegean and the
Ancient East, opens up the possibility of assigning to
the relative divisions sketched above absolute values
in terms of solar years. The invention of the Oriental
prototypes from which the European objects are ulti-
mately derived plainly gives a terminus post quern for the
appearance of the latter. The range of the simpler
original forms, such as flat celts, is, however, so great
as to afford no serviceable basis for synchronisms. The
earliest pins, ear-rings and collars current in the Danu-
bian province reproduce exactly specialized Asiatic
models. But the first two groups go back in their
homeland to before 3000 B.C., which is an impossible
date for the European copies. The collars on the other
hand are known from Syria and Egypt first about
1800 B.C., and this, if the Oriental origin of the form
be admitted, would give a reasonable upper limit for
our Early Bronze Age. An approximation to a lower
limit is suggested by a clay vessel from an Early Bronze
Age grave in Saxony that seems to copy a peculiar sort
of metal cup popular in the Aegean between 1 700 and
1 500 B.C. Certain Egyptian or Cretan paste beads
found in tombs furnished with Early Bronze Age
daggers and axes in South-eastern Spain would give a
METALLURGY AND TRADE 59
still lower limit to the period there but that the types of
bead have rather too wide a range.
Right at the end of the Middle Bronze Age a rapier
of Aegean type, datable there about 1350 B.C., appears
in German graves. Then, before 1200, swords, apparently
of European origin and Late Bronze Age date, reached
Greece and Egypt. A cross-dating is thereby obtained
fixing the beginning of the Late Bronze Age between
1300 and 1250 B.C. These figures are, however, only
valid for the standard region along the central amber
trade route. Elsewhere we must allow for a considerable
retardation as already explained.
Knee-shaft of wood for hafting
celts, cf. p. 6 1.
CHAPTER III
TYPOLOGY
TH E variety of tools, weapons, vessels and ornaments
at the disposal of Bronze Age man was immensely
greater than that known to his Stone Age forebears. It
is the material expression of enrichment of life and
extended control over nature. The enormous wealth of
objects that have come down to us from this brief
episode in human history renders possible a vivid
picture of that phase of life. Still it is almost embarras-
sing to the archaeologist. Here we shall describe only
the principal types of general interest, confining our-
selves in the case of the Ancient East to varieties that
have a special chronological or comparative value for
students in North-western Europe.
CELTS (AXE-HEADS)
The most widespread, and for typological chronology
the most important, family of tools is conveniently
termed "celt". This designation is properly applied to
axe-heads, but is sometimes extended to adzes and even
chisels of comparable form. The celt, whether used as
an axe or an adze, was mounted on a wooden staff or
shaft, the blade in the former case running parallel to
the length of the shaft, in the latter at right angles
thereto. The butt might of course be fitted directly into
a slit in a straight shaft, but, in the case of all the
European celts whose evolution is sketched below, it
is certain that the so-called knee-shaft was employed (a).
This can most readily be obtained by cutting off a
suitable bough or sapling just below the point where a
TYPOLOGY 6l
branch grew out of it. This side branch was then broken
off a couple of inches from its root and split. The celt
was inserted in the cleft which was then bound round
with sinews or wire. (Fig. on p. 59.)
Axe-heads and adze-heads of ground stone or flint
had been in use throughout the Neolithic Age and
indeed formed the most distinctive external trait of
that epoch. The earlier metal celts very closely resemble
the stone implements, some even reproducing the local
peculiarities of the Neolithic celts from the same district.
Nevertheless, some authors consider that polished stone
celts are all really imitations of copper originals.
The simplest form of metal celt, therefore termed
the flat celt, is in any case, like the stone implements,
practically flat on both faces, and the sides are nearly
but seldom quite parallel. Except in Egyptian ex-
amples the blade is generally slightly splayed out;
this splay would be a natural result of the hammering
necessary to sharpen the edge. Flat celts occur already
in predynastic Egypt, prediluvian strata at Susa in
Elam and in prehistoric cities on the Indus, as in the
earliest metal-using cultures of Cyprus, Crete, the
Cyclades and Greece. While most early Oriental speci-
mens are made of copper, the form was reproduced in
bronze at Troy and in the Aegean area generally.
Simple flat celts are also characteristic of the "Copper
Age" in Southern and Eastern Russia, Hungary, Italy,
Sardinia, Spain and Ireland. They occur sporadically
over a much wider area, even reaching Scandinavia, and
are sometimes associated with stone celts (e.g. in the
Rhine valley) in hoards and quite often in settlements.
By the beginning of the local Bronze Age the outlines
of the flat celt were being modified in Europe. In the
British Isles we meet with types whose butts are very
62 TYPOLOGY
narrow in proportion to the wide curving blade (Fig. 3,
no. 3). In Bohemia there is a variant with pointed
triangular butt, probably an adze-head.
But by this time the typological evolution was already
beginning. The first stage in the series is the flanged
celt (Randleistenbeil) hache A rebords e/evees\ distin-
guished by ridges at the sides of either face. These
flanges were doubtless in the first instance produced by
the hammering on the sides that was in any case
necessary after casting in an open mould (s). But they
were useful in two ways, both giving the tool increased
longitudinal rigidity (diminishing the risk of buckling
in the sense of the blow) and preventing the head
waggling on its shaft by gripping the prongs of the
split branch.
That the value of such flanges was known at least to
the ancient Egyptians is shown by a chisel strengthened
in this way from the tomb of Hetep-heres, the mother
of the Pyramid-builder Cheops (Khufu)(8>, but it was
apparently never applied to celts in Egypt, Mesopo-
tamia, the Aegean area or even Hungary and Southern
Russia. On the other hand, flanged celts, even of copper,
occur in Italian tombs, and in bronze they are charac-
teristic of the Early Bronze Age in Italy, Czechoslovakia,
Southern Germany, Britain and South-eastern Spain.
By a mature phase of that period local variations are
observable. Italian specimens always have a nick in the
butt formed by leaving intact part of the two jets from
the casting in a valve mould (Fig. 4, no. i); in
Bohemian and Central German types the butt is tri-
angular. In the Middle Bronze Age the foregoing
types persisted with divergent local variations in certain
areas. In Scandinavia, for example, the body is rather
long, the sides exactly parallel, and the flanges very
TYPOLOGY
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prominent (Fig. 4, no. 5). In Western Switzerland
and the Rhone valley a type, based on Italian models,
grew up distinguished by a great spatuliform blade.
At the same time evolutionary improvements were
being tried along three distinct lines.
Winged celts (Lappenbeil, hache d ailerons)
To diminish further the risk of side-slip a section of
the flanges on either face was widened to produce wings
that Could be hammered round the shaft-prongs on
either face. Thus arose the winged celt that was at home
in South-west Germany and Upper Italy. At first the
wings are in the centre of the implement (Fig. 4, no. 2) ;
towards the close of the Middle Bronze Age they have
retreated towards the butt. Then in the Late Bronze Age
a loop or ear is added for the thongs that lashed the
tool on to its shaft, and the section of the body below
the wings is thickened, perhaps under the influence of
the palstaves (Fig. 3, no. 8).
Palstaves (Absatzbeil, hache d talon)
To prevent the axe-head slipping back up the cleft
of the shaft at each stroke and so splitting the knee-
stick, a stop-ridge was developed between the flanges to
engage the ends of the shaft-prongs. The rudiments of
such a stop-ridge are observable on some Early Bronze
Age flanged celts both in Great Britain and in Central
Europe, but the fully developed palstave belongs to
the Middle Bronze Age (Reinecke C) and is character-
istic of Scandinavia, North-west Germany, France and
Britain (Fig. 3, no. 5). Subsequently the space between
the flanges below the stop-ridge was filled up with
metal in the casting, A reminiscence of the flanges is
TYPOLOGY 65
for a time preserved in the form of decorative ridges.
Especially in Scandinavia one can see very pretty
examples of " reminiscent decoration". A tapering ridge
is cast on each face of the palstave below the stop-ridge
to simulate the prongs of the cleft shaft that had once
projected downwards visibly on the faces of the tool.
A rather later stage is denoted by the addition of
an ear (Fig. 3, no. 6). There is a group of palstaves
with two ears, one on each side, in the Iberian
Peninsula, Southern France and Sardinia. A few such
palstaves have been found in the British Isles (Fig. 3,
no. 7), principally in the south and west. These are
doubtless imports, but it is generally supposed that the
palstave reached the Iberian Peninsula from Britain, It
is nevertheless to be noted that implements with two
lateral loops and exactly resembling the palstave in plan
but flat on both faces are common in Sardinia.
Constricted celts (Eohmisches
The advantages of the winged celt and the palstave
seem to be combined in a tool called by German
archaeologists a Bohemian palstave. It probably grew
up as follows. In Switzerland and Bavaria we find a
sort of flanged celt that has been hammered so hard on
the centre of each side that the body is narrowed while
wings develop on either face (Fig. 4, no. 3). The
classical Bohemian palstave might result from imitating
the product by casting, the section below the wings
being again cast solid (Fig. 4, no. 4). This form appears
in Bohemia and Moravia during the Middle Bronze Age
and was exported to neighbouring territories, particu-
larly Hungary (41).
CBA
66 TYPOLOGY
Socketed celt (Tullenbeil^ hache a douille)
The natural culmination of all the previous develop-
ments was the socketed celt. It no longer requires the
splitting of the shaft-end, eliminates side-slip almost
entirely and provides a surface to engage the end of
the shaft. In the Late Bronze Age this form certainly
ousted all its predecessors. According to Montelius it
was evolved from one of them, the winged celt. It is
supposed that the wings grew till they met round the
shart-prongs, forming a sort of tube divided by a septum
(the body of the celt) in the middle. This was then
eliminated and the end of the tube closed. It is true that
some socketed celts, principally in Italy and Southern
Germany where winged celts were current, exhibit
semicircular ornaments cast in relief on either side
(Fig. 4, no. 7). These certainly imitate wings and, on
the theory, are survivals thereof. However, in Hungary
and Moravia the socketed celts, instead of the wing
pattern, are decorated with ridges forming a V on either
face that, just as obviously, reproduce the opening of a
constricted celt. And in Scandinavia there are remark-
able socketed celts with imitation flanges and a tapering
ridge between them on the lower part of the blade
(Fig. 4, no. 6). These successfully reproduce the effect
of a flanged celt, hafted, and bound round with a
bronze collar. Sophus Muller<29) indeed contends that
the Danish socketed celt was evolved thus out of the
flanged celt with attached bronze collar without the
intervention of the winged ' celt.
None of these a priori theories can be accepted. The
imitative patterns invoked by Montelius and Sophus
Mtiller were not introduced by the ancient smiths in
pious memory of effete devices, but to make a new type
TYPOLOGY 67
of tool look as like as possible the accustomed model of
each region, a model with which it was in active com-
petition. Quite possibly the origin of the socketed celt
is to be sought outside Europe. There were in Mesopo-
tamia cutting tools, adzes rather than axes, made out of
a sheet of metal whose sides were folded round so as
to form a tubular socket. Similar implements are known
from South Russia, and in the Evans Collection at
Oxford is a socketed gouge from Dalmatia formed on
this principle.
The centre where European socketed celts were first
made has not been exactly determined. The oldest
actual examples would be some Danish ones assigned
to the Middle Bronze Age. In general the socketed
celt belongs to the Late Bronze Age.
T-AXE
The Egyptians, owing probably to the kinds of
timber available, did not fix their axe-heads into a split
stick but bound them on to a shaft by lashings round
and across the head. To facilitate attachment, lugs,
continuing the line of the butt, grow out of it on either
side by Middle Kingdom times if not before (6) (Fig. 5,
no, i). Stone axe-heads of the same form have been found
in Egypt, Central Asia and America.
ADZES
Adzes in general follow the same lines of evolution as
the foregoing types of axe-heads. The adze may be
narrower and sometimes there is a difference in the
slope of one face(6). Take a cross-section along the
length of the implement and draw an imaginary line
from the blade to the middle of the butt. Then in an axe
5-*
68 TYPOLOGY
the angles made by the two faces with this line must be
equal, otherwise each blow will go crooked. In an adze
no such symmetry about the major axis is necessary.
The real distinction between an axe and an adze is,
however, the method of hafting which can seldom be
determined from an inspection of the head. Almost
any form of celt could be converted into an adze by
merely turning the blade through a right angle, e.g.
in the case of a knee-shaft by splitting the spur at right
angles to the main branch instead of in a line with it.
Still in Europe the transverse hafting of the celt to make
it do duty as an adze was falling into desuetude in the
later part of the Bronze Age. To avoid it the smiths cast
palstaves and late winged celts in which the blade was
at right angles to the concave faces that received the
haft's prongs (Fig. 3, no. 9).
In addition to these simple variants on the axe-head,
we should note here one or two peculiar types of celt
that generally served as adzes. The proto-dynastic
Egyptian adzes and one or two Elamite examples have
rounded heads (or butts). Under the Old Kingdom
and still more in Middle Kingdom times this rounded
head was separated from the body by a marked concave
neck (Fig. 5, no. 2).
In the earliest Indian chisels(s) the blade expands
slightly till about one-quarter of its length from the
butt, then contracts abruptly after a sharp shoulder
only to expand again towards the edge. Some adzes of
this pattern have been found in Late Minoan Crete
and elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean region.
A flat celt, developed from this type, in which the neck
makes a right angle with the shoulders is common in
Late Bronze Age hoards in Sicily and Southern Italy.
From it grows the trunnion celt or lug-adze where the
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shoulders have become definite lugs, projecting on
either side, a type belonging for the most part to the
Hallstatt Iron Age. Its growth, however, interlocks
with that of the Sardinian flat celts with two lateral
loops already mentioned in discussing palstaves (90).
CHISELS AND GOUGES
Like the adzes, the chisels follow closely the evolution
of the celt; the essential feature is the narrowness of
the blade. We thus have flat chisels, flanged chisels,
flanged chisels with a stop-ridge (very narrow palstaves)
and socketed chisels as well as lugged chisels. Late in
the Bronze Age of Italy, France and Great Britain
tanged chisels appear, probably developed out of
shouldered chisels such as we found in most ancient
India(s). The earlier variant, found even with palstaves,
closely resembles the square-shouldered adze in outline,
though the whole tool is naturally more slender, the
tang relatively longer and more tapering, while the
blade expands very markedly. In the latest Bronze Age
the tang is not only narrower but also thinner than the
portion below the shoulder; in fact it projects from a
flat surface which would engage the end of a tubular
wood or bone handle in which the implement must have
been held (Fig. 5, no. 6).
Gouges are just chisels with a hollow edge. Imple-
ments of this type are known in stone from the Balkans
and Russia and in flint from Scandinavia. Copper
chisels with a concave blade are known very early in
Mesopotamia, from Troy II and from Copper Age
graves in South Russia. True socketed gouges, resembling
socketed chisels with a concave blade, are very common
in the Late Bronze Age all over Europe. But it will be
remembered that gouges with the sockets formed by
TYPOLOGY 71
rolling over the metal to form a tube have been found
in a Dalmatian hoard. In general it should be noted that
socketed chisels and gouges spread more rapidly and
earlier than socketed celts (axes). For example, a lake
village at Alpenquai near Zurich yielded five socketed
chisels and one socketed gouge but no socketed celts;
their place was taken by twenty-seven examples of
the supposedly older winged type.
AXES (SHAFT-HOLE AXES]
It is curious that the modern type of axe-head that
fits on to, not into, the shaft had a very limited distribu-
tion down to the later Iron Age. The expedient of
providing a hole in the axe-head, parallel to the blade,
was indeed known in Mesopotamia in prediluvian
times (8). It was also adopted in Crete and the Aegean
islands, in Hungary and Russia at the beginning of
the Metal Age in each area and occasionally in Scandi-
navia, Sicily, Southern Italy, Sardinia and Anatolia.
On the other hand, this practical type of metal axe-head
was, apart from stray imports, never adopted in Egypt
nor yet in any part of Central or Western Europe till
late in the Iron Age. Even in Hungary the shaft-hole
axe was practically ousted by the socketed celt in the
Late Bronze Age,
The shaft-hole axe is apparently a Sumerian invention.
Certainly before 3000 B.C. the Sumerians were casting
excellent axe-heads with a tube for the shaft reinforced
by rings around it and a ridge at the back opposite and
parallel to the blade (Fig. 6, no. i). Of course the
manufacture of such an axe required the use of a two-
valve mould and a movable core; probably the ridge at
the back was originally suggested by the seam, though
in practice enlarged to give additional strength at a
72 TYPOLOGY
weak point. Allied types were soon adopted also in
Syria. There and in Mesopotamia a curious battle-axe
with a very narrow blade was in use during the third
and second millennia. The South Russian and Hun-
garian copper axes for the most part resemble the
Sumerian in having a tubular shaft-hole clearly dis-
tinguished in profile from the blade (Fig. 6, no. 3).
Viewed from above, however, it is seen that the sides of
the blade (meeting naturally at the edge) form tangents
to the shaft-hole. This peculiarity they share with the
early Aegean axes. But such have no tubular extension
round the shaft-hole and so look rather like extrava-
gantly thick celts with a perforation joining their sides
near the end. The Sicilian and some Russian types con-
form to the Aegean pattern. The Hungarian axes of
the Middle Bronze Age, however, are extraordinarily
like mature Mesopotamian types.
TRANSVERSE AXE! SHAFT-HOLE ADZE
Side by side with the weapon described at the be-
ginning of the last paragraph, the inhabitants of the
Tigris-Euphrates valleys from the earliest historical
periods to the beginning of the Iron Age used an
implement identical with the foregoing in respect of its
tubular shaft-socket but with the blade turned at right
angles to the shaft (Fig. 6, no. 2). This odd type was
confined to Babylonia and Assyria with the exception of
one specimen from a grave in the Kuban valley north
of the Caucasus and one from Syria,
DOUBLE-AXE
The Minoans of Crete preferred an axe with two
blades in the same plane and the shaft-hole midway
between them. This weapon, which was possibly derived
TYPOLOGY
73
Fig. 6. (i) Early Sumerian axe, Ur.
(2) Sumerian transverse axe, Ur.
(3) Copper axe, Hungary.
(4) Symbolic double-axe, Rhine.
(5) Axe-adze, Crete, Middle Minoan.
(6) Axe-adze, Hungary, "Copper Age'
A11J
74 TYPOLOGY
in the last resort from Mesopotamia, became a cult
symbol in the Minoan religion and was in practical
use throughout the Aegean world from Early Minoan
times. There are isolated examples from Hungary,
South Russia and Sardinia, the latter with a tubular
extension of the shaft-hole. In France, Switzerland and
Germany a few double-axes of copper are known whose
central perforation is too small to take a real shaft.
They must then be symbolic and perhaps served as
ingots or units of weight (p. 53). In the same connection
we may mention an odd implement manufactured in
Saxo-Thuringia during the Early Bronze Age. It
resembles a double-axe in having two rather blunt
blades in the same plane and a shaft-hole between them,
but its edges are absurdly narrow (40.
AXE-ADZE
In the Aegean (12) we find from Early Minoan times
a tool resembling a double-axe in which one blade has
been twisted round till it lies transversely to the shaft
and the other blade (Fig. 6, no. 5). A similar type is
known from Persia and there is an example from the
Kuban which, owing to the character of the shaft-tube,
looks exactly like a combination of the two Sumerian
axe-types on a single shaft. Axe-adzes are distinctive
of the Copper Age of Hungary (40. Here, it is said,
the shaft-hole has not been made by casting but by
punching through the red-hot metal. Later the imple-
ment reached Sardinia, perhaps from Hungary since
the Sardinian examples all have a short tubular projection
round the shaft-hole, a feature noticeable on many
Hungarian specimens (Fig. 6, no. 6) but strange to the
Aegean series. Contemporary with the axe-adzes in
Hungary was a sort of axe-hammer that might have been
TYPOLOGY 75
made by breaking off the transverse blade of an axe-adze
near the shaft-hole.
BATTLE-AXES
This designation is conventionally restricted to a
group of axes with spikes or knobs for the butts that
are virtually confined to Hungary and Scandinavia. In
Hungary there are two main types: in one the blade
expands slightly towards the edge while the butt
terminates in a disc. During the Middle Bronze Age
this disc is flat or slightly convex; in the Late Bronze
Age a large spike projects from it. The other type,
confined to the Middle Bronze Age, has a very narrow
blade, a long tube for the shaft and a fan-shaped butt.
Both types may be richly decorated with engraved
scroll patterns. The comparatively rare Danish battle-
axes are considerably more massive and generally have
a knobbed butt. The majority belong to the Middle
Bronze Age and are ornamented with engraved spirals.
DAGGERS
Almost more important for typological chronology
than the celts are the daggers, rapiers and swords. The
first-named weapons, many of which also served as
knives, were current from the beginning of the Metal
Age throughout the Old World, The important features
in the dagger are the shape of the blade in plan, the
provision made against crumpling up under the weight
of a thrust (securing longitudinal rigidity) and the
attachment of the hilt. The most primitive form of
dagger has a roughly triangular blade that is nearly flat
on both faces. Triangular daggers are as a rule extremely
short, very rarely attaining a length of 6 inches. Any
increase in the length must be accompanied by an
76 TYPOLOGY
inconvenient widening of the base if the weapon was
not to buckle under the weight of the thrust, unless the
increased length were counterbalanced by a thickening
of the blade. And, as the dagger was a stabbing weapon,
the weight of the blade had to be kept down to preserve
the proper balance. A considerable increase of length
was, however, possible if the edges were kept parallel
for some distance below the hilt before tapering off
to a point. This produced the so-called ogival dagger
(Fig. 7, no. 7), Both types could be cast in an open
mould.
An extension of the blade without undue increase in
width, thickness or weight was, however, permitted by
casting a thick stout ridge running down the centre —
of course in a two-piece mould. This central ridge is
termed a midrib and greatly diminished the danger of
buckling without affecting the penetrating power (Fig. 7,
nos. 4, 5).
All daggers were provided with hilts of wood, horn,
ivory or metal. Except in certain Copper Age types the
hilts were affixed to the blades by rivets. The hilt,
consisting either of a single piece, slitted longitudinally
to slip over the blade, or of two pieces, united by nails
or lashings, might be attached directly to the butt of
the blade or on to a tongue-like projection of the latter,
termed a tang. This gives a distinction between tanged
and tangless daggers. The tang may be either wiry, in
fact a sort of prolongation backwards of the midrib, or
flat, but is always narrower than the butt from which it
projects like a neck with shoulders on either side. The
butt or heel may be either a straight line along the
widest part of the blade forming the base of the triangle,
or a triangular, trapeze-shaped or semicircular projection
of the blade behind that line. When neither rivets nor
TYPOLOGY
77
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78 TYPOLOGY
tang were employed to secure the hilt, the backward
projection of the blade had to be relatively long to
prevent waggling. In a curious Copper Age dagger
from Western Europe (Fig. 7, no. 2) it is so long as to
resemble a tang, but, since its edges form continuous
lines from the base of the blade proper, this type should
be assigned to the tangless class. In Egyptian tangless
daggers, most Aegean types, and all continental Euro-
pean models the broad base of the hilt enveloped the butt
on either side leaving a semicircular space in the middle
(Fig. 7, nos. i, 3, 6). This feature is traceable even
on the hilts of flint blades in predynastic Egypt. It is
conspicuous on bronze-hilted blades in Europe (Fig. 7,
no. 6) and is recognizable on many others, whose hilts
have perished, by the marks they may have left — a
feature always to be looked for as soon as the blade is
found. In the case of Asiatic daggers, which are nearly
always tanged, no similar overlapping is observable.
Often, however, a metal ferrule is fitted over the butt
of the blade and the base of the hilt to mask and
strengthen the join.
The earliest known Egyptian dagger, dating from
Middle Predynastic times, is flat and triangular with a
triangular heel, so that the blade as a whole is rhomboid.
The earliest Mesopotamian daggers, on the contrary,
are tanged and generally strengthened with a midrib
(Fig. 7, no. 4). Very early specimens are already ogival
in outline. Throughout Asia Minor as far as Troy II
daggers of the same general pattern are current.
In Crete some Early Minoan daggers are flat and
reminiscent of predynastic Egypt, but the midrib was
soon employed, and examples with a broad, flat tang are
quite early. The midrib was very pronounced also in
Cypriote and Cycladic daggers. In Cyprus a very
TYPOLOGY 79
curious form grew up in which the midrib was prolonged
into a long tang bent over at the top (Fig. 7, no. 5).
The type, which appeared already in Early Aegean
times and lasted till the Late Mycenaean period in the
island, was exported to Palestine, Syria, Anatolia and
Hungary (18). Weapons, of very similar form but with
slits in the blade, as if they had been hafted as spear-
heads, are known from the Cyclades and Troy II (8).
In Middle Aegean times ogival daggers were in use
both in Crete and by the Minyans of Greece. In
M.M. I deposits we meet a tanged ogival dagger with
slight flanges round the shoulders and bordering the
tang. It formed the starting-point for an important
series of daggers and rapiers of later Minoan times. The
flanges, of course, served to keep in place the plates of
wood or ivory that formed the grip of the hilt.
The regular series of continental European daggers
begins in the Early Bronze Age with a small flat
triangular round-heeled blade, often adorned with
groups of grooves parallel to the edges (Fig. 7, no. 3).
Before the end of the period such weapons were being
provided with hilts of bronze, cast separately, in North
Italy, the Rhone valley and Central Europe (Fig. 7,
no. 6). In Germany imitations were manufactured with
hilts cast in one piece with the blades. From Brittany
and England a couple of contemporary daggers have
survived whose wooden hilts were studded with hun-
dreds of tiny gold nails.
During the Middle Bronze Age an ogival dagger or
short sword was evolved out of the foregoing types in
the Rhone valley, preserving their characteristic decora-
tion, rounded heel and flat section. The standard
Central European type of this period, however, may
have had a different origin, for it has an angular trapeze-
Fig. 8. Rapiers and swords. All J
(1) Mycenae, Shaft Graves, M.M. Ill, type I.
(2) Mycenae, Shaft Graves, M.M. Ill, type II a.
(3) Mycenae, Shaft Graves, M.M. Ill, type II b.
(4) Crete, Zafer Papoura, L.M. Ill, cruciform guards.
(5) Crete, Zafer Papoura, L.M. Ill, horned guards.
(6) South-western Germany, Middle Bronze Age.
(7) Hungary, Late Bronze Age.
(8) Bavaria, Middle Bronze Age.
(9) Hungary, Late Bronze Age.
(10) Morigen sword, Switzerland,
(n) Antennae sword, Switzerland.
(iz) Hallstatt sword of bronze, Early Iron Age, Austria.
TYPOLOGY
8l
CBA
82 TYPOLOGY
shaped butt, and often a distinct, if generally broad
and low, midrib and lacks all ornamentation (Fig. 7,
no. 7). In the earlier specimens (43) the heel is relatively
broad and carries six rivets ; later it is narrowed down
and the number of rivets reduced till in the Late Bronze
Age only two survive. In the latter period, too, a few
specimens with flanged tangs, inspired by Mycenaean
models, appear.
RAPIERS
Rapiers, as noted, appear to be an Aegean invention.
Orientals shrank from the close fighting in which alone
such weapons are useful, while the continental bar-
barians of Europe lacked as yet the metallurgical skill
necessary for their forging. The earliest known rapier,
recently found at Mallia in Crete and dating from
M.M.I (circa 19506.0.) is over 90 cm. long. The
blade has a stout, wide midrib. The hilt, of ivory plated
with gold, meets the blade in a slightly convex line (an
Asiatic as opposed to Egyptian feature) and is sur-
mounted by a long pear-shaped pommel of crystal
(also very Sumerian lookingda)). The regular Minoan
series only begins some centuries later with the Shaft
Graves of Mycenae belonging to the close of M.M. Ill
(about 1600 B.C.). By that date three distinct types are
known: (I) a relatively flat blade of elongated ogival
outline with a flat tang (Fig. 8, no. i); huge tapering
blades with a skewer-like midrib terminating either,
(II a) in a round heel from which projects a short
narrow tang (Fig. 8, no. 2), or (II £) in a square butt
with wider tang, both shoulders and tang being flanged
(Fig. 8, no. 3). All were balanced by heavy pommels of
crystal or semi-precious stone to receive which a spur
projects from the tang of II b. The latter 's grip con-
TYPOLOGY 83
sisted of plates, let in between the hilt's flanges and held
in place by large gold-capped rivets. The grip of II a
was supported by gold mounts fitting over the heel.
These already have projections at the shoulder serving
as guards to divert from the gripping hand the ad-
versary's weapon when the rapier was parrying a thrust.
A short length of the edges, just below the butt, was
intentionally blunted so that the thumb and forefinger
of the swordsman's hand might rest there — a feature
known as the ricassodi).
Later, the flanges on the shoulder of type II b
were developed into lateral horn-like (L.M. II and
L.M. Ill a) or cruciform (L.M. Ill) projections like-
wise serving as guards (30 (Fig. 8, no. 4). Late in
L.M. Ill #, too, the flange was carried right round the
hilt so as to support also the pommel. One or two
rapiers of the last-named variety have been found north
of the Alps'towards the close of the Middle Bronze Age.
The continental European rapiers that begin in the
Middle Bronze Age might be regarded as mere pro-
longations of the ogival dagger. The early specimens
have six rivet-holes for the attachment of the hilt
(Fig. 8, no. 6). Such weapons, which rarely reach a
length of 60 cm., are common in Central Europe and
Scandinavia and even reach Great Britain. In the latter
country two-piece moulds for their manufacture have
actually been found. As in the case of the daggers, the
butts of these weapons grew narrower as time went on,
yielding in the Late Bronze Age a form with a tapering
butt and three rivet-holes, well represented in South-
west Germany, Switzerland and France and occurring
sporadically in Hungary and Italy (Fig. 8. no. 7). A
contemporary Italian and French variant has a rod-like
tang terminating in a hook rather like a Cypriote
6-2
84 TYPOLOGY
dagger. The above series was, I believe, inspired by
Aegean models. Yet in South-eastern Spain we find,
associated with Early Bronze Age celts and daggers, a
short flat sword that is clearly just a magnified dagger,
preserving the comparatively flat section and round heel
of the Early Bronze Age type (2).
Some of the above-mentioned rapier types in Italy,
Central Europe and Scandinavia are provided with
bronze hilts, cast on, or cast in one piece with, the blade.
Early in the Middle Bronze Age (Reinecke B) the hilts
are cylindrical or, in South-west Germany, concave
(Fig. 8, no. 8). Later in the same period (Reinecke C)
a type with octagonal hilt, richly decorated with engraved
patterns, arose in the Upper Danube basin. Contem-
porary Danish sword-hilts are superbly decorated with
inlaid spiral patterns. Still later (Reinecke D) the hilts
begin to swell out in the middle, but concurrent changes
in the shape of the blade indicate that we are now
dealing with a new weapon, the cut-and-thrust sword,
SWORDS
All the weapons hitherto described were designed
primarily for thrusting. None the less some of the
bronze-hilted types from Scandinavia and Central
Europe could also be swung. A real sword that can
slash as well as thrust must have its centre of gravity
shifted towards the blade, while for thrusting the weight
had to be in the pommel. Certain long wide blades
with a bulge half-way up and a short flat tang, found in
Denmark, North Germany, Western Hungary and
Upper Italy, seem to be aiming at this result. But a
stroke imposes much greater strain on the joint between
hilt and blade than does a thrust. The short-tanged type
TYPOLOGY 85
just described could no more grow into a reliable sword
than the round- or square-heeled rapier.
True swords seem to begin in a tanged blade whose
flat tang and round shoulders are bordered with flanges,
as in the Minoan rapiers classed as type II a. The form
is certainly inspired by rapiers of this family, but the
northern and Italian blades in question differ from the
Aegean in that the edges are nearly parallel instead of
tapering, and the midrib wide and flat so as not to impede
a cut (Fig. 8, no. 9). In what Kossinnaos) regards as the
earliest type, appearing in Denmark according to Sophus
Mliller(29) in his period 2, there are no rivet-holes in the
tang though there may be four in the heel ; lead solder
was sometimes used to keep in place the horn plates of
the grip. This type occurs principally in Scandinavia,
North-eastern Germany and Upper Italy. Some Central
European swords with rivet-holes in the tang can
hardly be later. They begin in the closing phase of the
Middle Bronze Age and flourish in the Late Bronze
Age. During the latter phase the blade tends to widen
out to a leaf-shape — a barbarous weapon adapted almost
exclusively for hacking. In late versions (Reinecke E)
nicks are seen just below the shoulder to guard the
thumb and forefinger resting on the blunted edge
(ricasso) above (33). Others, however, say that the nicks
served to prevent the blade joggling out of its scabbard.
Sometimes also a spur projects from the end of the tang
to hold the pommel. In some West European swords,
belonging to a period subsequent to the pure Bronze
Age, some of the rivet-holes are replaced by slits. In
many of these West European swords the lower end of
the blade has been narrowed down, apparently by filing
away part of a leaf-shaped blade, with a most curious
effect like a carp's tongue.
86 TYPOLOGY
Early versions of the flange-hilted leaf-shaped sword
without any ricasso or even marked swelling in the blade
are very common in Northern and Central Europe,
Styria, Carniola and Bosnia and, as already remarked,
even reached Greece and Egypt before 1200 B.C. (32).
The immense majority of the late versions, however,
come from west of the Rhine, particularly from France
and Britain. In the latter country they, with other
exotic types, characterize the local Late Bronze Age
which is really largely contemporary with the Early
Iron Age of Central Europe. There, early in the Hall-
statt period, our bronze swords had undergone a further
modification, losing altogether the flanges round the
hilt and acquiring instead a widened extension thereof
to take a conical pommel. This is the true Hallstatt
sword, represented by only a few stray examples in
Britain (Fig. 8, no. 12).
Parallel to the flange-hilted sword go certain develop-
ments of the bronze-hilted rapiers whose blades have
been assimilated to the leaf-shaped order. Two important
types with a swelling bronze grip of flattened oval cross-
section were developed in Switzerland. In one variant,
termed the antennae sword (Fig. 8, no. 1 1), the pommel
consists of a stout bronze ribbon bent into opposing
spirals. The type is common on both sides of the
Alps and is found eastwards as far as Macedonia and
Slovakia, northwards into Scandinavia and westwards
as far as Lincolnshire. The other Swiss sword, known
as the Morigen or Ronzano type, has a pommel shaped
like an oval saucer (Fig. 8, no. 10). Both types begin
in the latter half of the Late Bronze Age, Reinecke E,
and last into the succeeding phase of the Iron Age.
Contemporary with them in Hungary went handsome
swords with a swelling grip decorated with raised bands
TYPOLOGY 87
(representing the thongs that bound the plated hilts of
the tanged swords) and surmounted with flat or saucer-
shaped pommels. Such swords were exported from
Hungary to Upper Italy, Eastern France, the Rhine
valley and Eastern Galicia.
CHAPES
The rapiers and swords just described were normally
carried in wooden sheathes which have naturally
perished. We possess, however, some of the bronze
chapes in which the scabbards terminated. The Middle
Bronze Age chapes resemble little diamond-shaped
snuffboxes or end in a loop (Fig. 9, no. i). The
Hallstatt scabbards, on the contrary, ended in weird
"winged chapes", a few specimens of which reached
Britain (Fig. 9, no. 3). The type more common in
Britain and France resembled the last named but was
longer and lacked the great lateral wings (Fig. 9, no. 2).
HALBERD (DOLCHSTAB)
The halberd is a peculiar weapon, distinctive of the
Early Bronze Age in certain parts of Europe. It is
essentially a triangular dagger hafted at right angles to a
staff. Indeed a halberd can often be distinguished from
a dagger only by observing that the mark left by the
haft runs across the blade. Frequently, however, the
halberd blade is asymmetrical, i.e. the triangle that would
enclose it is scalene and not isosceles (Fig. 9, no. 5).
The weapon is believed to have originated in Southern
Spain or Portugal, since certain flint blades found on
Copper Age sites there may be best explained as hal-
berds. It is in any case a regular element in the furniture
of Early Bronze Age graves along the South-east coast
of the peninsula; thence it seems to have reached Upper
Fig, 9. (i) Looped chape, Bavaria, Middle Bronze Age. J
(2) Chape, Scotland, Late Bronze Age. £
(3) Winged chape, Scotland, Hallstatt pattern. |
(4) Bronze shafted halberd, Early Bronze Age, Germany.
(5) Halberd blade, Italy, Early Bronze Age. £
(6) Middle Bronze Age sword, Denmark. £
TYPOLOGY 89
Italy, since a few specimens have been found there, and
the weapon is depicted, brandished by warriors, on the
rocks of the Ligurian Alps. Finally, there is one speci-
men, markedly asymmetrical and much incurved on
the lower edge, from Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae, This
halberd, though doubtless inspired by the western
group, was a local product since its big rivet-heads
have been gilded (12).
Westward from Spain the device was transmitted
across the Atlantic to Ireland. A large number of
specimens, mostly of copper, are known from the island.
Many have a peculiar scythe-like outline. From Ireland
a few halberds reached England and Scotland. Thence
the type journeyed across the North Sea and up the
Elbe where it was adopted in Saxo-Thuringia. Some
early halberd blades here are decorated with incised
lines like the contemporary daggers. Subsequently a
localized variant was created : the haft was sheathed in
metal and its head enveloped in a bronze cowl into
which the blade was fitted. At first the blade was
attached by rivets ; in later specimens the cowl has been
cast on but shows imitation rivet-heads moulded on its
surface (Fig. 9, no. 4). These Central German halberds
found their way, presumably by trade, to Sweden,
Lithuania and Slovakia. But the weapon was never
adopted in Silesia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, South-
western Germany or France.
SPEAR-HEADS
While metal was scarce, missile weapons would
naturally be tipped with flint or horn points. At the
same time the shorter forms of dagger could easily be
converted into lance-heads by attachment to a long
shaft. A blade intended specifically for a spear-head,
9O TYPOLOGY
however, would rather have the shape of a laurel or
willow leaf. Some sort of tang was usually needed to
facilitate union between the blade and the shaft. In
Mesopotamia (8), where the shafts (or at least the fore-
shafts) were normally made from hollow reeds, the tang
was narrow and projected from a marked shoulder at
the base of the blade that would engage the outer edge
of the reed. The tang in the most popular variant is
rectangular in section and tapers off below like a modern
poker point. Hence the name "poker-butted spear-
head " (Fig. 10, no. i). The type begins in Sumer before
3000 B.C. and is found also in Elam, North Syria and
beyond the Caucasus. In South Russia it persisted
throughout the Copper Age into the belated Late Bronze
Age (contemporary with the Hallstatt period(ios)).
In Egypt a specialized spear-head of metal first
appears in early dynastic times (6). The one specimen,
known to the author, seems really to conform to
the tanged pattern, though it is very rough, but is
distinguished by a very broad ferrule of sheet copper
that originally encircled both the split end of the shaft
and the contained tang. But metal spear-heads are very
rare in Egypt till New Kingdom times.
In the Cyclades during the Early Aegean period the
shaft of split wood projected a long way down the
blade, to which it was attached by thongs. A pair of
slits were accordingly left in the blade to receive the
bindings (a). From the islands the type spread to Troy II
and across the Greek mainland to Levkasds). Towards
the close of Middle Helladic times this slitted spear-
head gave birth to an odd form, confined to mainland
Greece, in which the tip (or perhaps half the tip) of the
shaft fitted into a shoe-like socket cast on one face of
the blade. The principal development of the spear-head
TYPOLOGY
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92 TYPOLOGY
in the Aegean, however, starts with an Early Minoan
type ending in a broad flat tang originally riveted into
the shaft. During Middle Minoan times a tubular
socket was formed by bending the edges of the tang
round a mandril. The tube was later strengthened by
forcing a cast ring over its lip.
In Britain there are some kite-shaped blades of Early
Bronze Age date terminating in a long, narrow, flat
tang (Fig. 10, no. 2). In at least one instance a ferrule
had been fitted over the end of the shaft in which the
tang was embedded so as to project over the blade (Fig.
10, no. 3). Greenwell has suggested that a true socketed
spear-head then developed through casting the ferrule
in one piece with the blade and suppressing the
tang(34). The Arreton Down type of spear-head (so-
called from a hoard found at that place in the Isle of
Wight) conforms exactly to what might have been
expected to result from this process. The majority of
British spear-heads of the Middle Bronze Age, however,
agree with contemporary continental types. The blade
is shaped like a laurel leaf, and the tube of the socket
(formed by core-casting) extends well into the body of
the blade and is continued externally as a midrib to the
point. This form of head appears in Scandinavia, Central
Europe, Hungary and Italy at the beginning of the
Middle Bronze Age. In the Late Bronze Age it tended
to give way to a form with lanceolate blade. Both types
were secured to the shaft by a pin through a hole in the
socket.
In Britain evolution followed different lines, a pair
of loops developing on the socket through which thongs
wrapped round the shaft could pass. These thongs took
the place of rivets. In the earlier examples, associated
in hoards with the older group of palstaves, and so of
TYPOLOGY 93
Middle Bronze Age date, the loops stand near the
mouth of the socket (Fig. 10, no. 4). This type is purely
British, the few examples from North France being
certainly imports from across the Channel, though
single-eared spear-heads occur in the " Copper Age" of
South Russia. Later the loops approach the base of the
blade and finally join on to it (Fig. 10, no. 5). Examples
even of the last phase are associated with rapiers. In
our Late Bronze Age the loops have become either
small eyelets near the base of the blade or semicircular
slits, generally in the swelling part of a lanceolate blade.
The small eyelets may still have had the same functional
value as the ancestral loops. They can be paralleled
on Sicilian and South Italian spear-heads of bronze
belonging there already to the Early Iron Age. The
curious semicircular openings (Fig, 10, no. 6), however,
can hardly have been designed for receiving binding
thongs; there is in fact generally a rivet-hole in the
socket of such spear-heads. The type doubtless origi-
nated in the British Isles though a derivation from the
Early Cycladic slitted form has been suggested by Coffey
(57). From Britain specimens were exported as far as
Huelva in Spain (92), and the type somehow reached
Central and Southern Russia. The idea was adopted
and imitated there, moulds for the manufacture of the
local variant having been found in the Ukraine (105).
ARROW-HEADS
Metal could only be used for arrow-heads when it
was very cheap. Actually flint and bone arrow-heads
remained current nearly everywhere throughout the
Bronze Age. In Egypt and Crete flint lunates were
employed to form transverse heads. In Middle Helladic
and Mycenaean tombs we find superb hollow-based
94 TYPOLOGY
(barbed) arrow-heads of flint or obsidian, and cruder
variants on the same form are common in the Late
Bronze Age urnfields of Central Europe. The finest
stemmed and barbed arrow-heads of Britain and France
belong exclusively to the Bronze Age. Barbed bone
tips are also found in the Late Bronze Age of Italy and
Central Europe.
Barbed metal arrow-heads of various patterns but
always with a long tapering tang are known from Egypt,
Mycenaean Greece and Central Europe during the
Middle and Late Bronze Age. In the last-named area
the spur-like tang gradually gave way to a tubular
socket. The Early Bronze Age graves of South-eastern
Spain have yielded a peculiar barbless form with broad
leaf-shaped head and a long tail-like tang. It must be
remembered that bronze was still used for arrow-heads
quite late in the Iron Age.
KNIVES
Many flint knives of the Stone Age had probably
been simply backed with wooden handles. Ground
stone knives mounted in the same manner are known in
Eastern Europe and Asia. A translation of such into
metal would be just a strip of copper sharpened along
one side by hammering. Such knife-blades with one
or two rivet-holes in the back have actually been found
in England, France and Central Russia, but generally in
a Late Bronze Age context.
Such tools were extremely clumsy, yet it was no easy
matter to attach a single-edged knife to a handle so that
it should not waggle when pressure was put upon it,
Hence single-bladed knives are a late feature. An
early group, represented in Old Kingdom Egypt (6) and
Troy 1 1 (i ?), solved the problem by prolonging the back
TYPOLOGY 95
of the blade to form a narrow tapering tang on to which
a tubular handle of wood or bone was fitted (Fig. 1 i,
no. i). In Greece such implements do not appear before
Middle Aegean times. Then the hilt was attached by
from three to five rivets (not all in a straight line) to a
wide butt without the use of a tang (3). Later a broad
tang was used to support the handle.
In Central Europe single-edged knives appear first
towards the close of the Middle Bronze Age. All have
arched backs, the handle being either attached by a rivet
to a spur continuing the line of the back (Fig. 1 I, no. 2)
or cast in one piece with the blade. In the Late Bronze
Age the variety of types is multiplied. The blade is either
straight or recurved. The handle may be of bronze
terminating in a loop and inlaid on either face with
horn plates held in position by a series of metal tabs;
alternatively a wooden handle was fitted into a tubular
socket (Fig. 11, no. 5) or, as in the previous period,
on to a long spur (Fig. 1 1, no. 6). In Switzerland was
manufactured the curious variant of the latter group,
with a section of solid metal where the ball of the
hand rested, shown in (Fig. n, no. 7). The type, that
belongs to Reinecke's phase E, was exported as far as
Silesia, Hungary and Central France (41).
In Great Britain single-edged knives are virtually
unknown. But it must be remembered that the short
daggers could be, and doubtless were, used as knives.
They are indeed often termed, very properly, knife-
daggers. In fact some protodynastic Egyptian, Late
Minoan and Early Bronze Age British " daggers" are
rounded off at the point so that their use as daggers is
excluded.
In the British Isles the round-pointed knives of the
Early Bronze Age, that with their round heels and
TYPOLOGY
II
^ 8w--s £
E
II
33333
TYPOLOGY 97
numerous rivets are so patently allied to the more
pointed " daggers", form the starting-point for two
specialized knives of our Late Bronze Age. The first
has a long blade and a short flat tang, nearly as wide as
the blade, that generally bears two rivets (Fig. 1 I, no. 8).
The second, but that it is found associated with the
first, might be regarded as evolved therefrom by the
addition of a ferrule like the socketed spear-heads of
the Arreton Down class; for it is characterized by an
elliptical socket with one or two pairs of rivet-holes,
that looks just what might have developed out of such a
combination with the hypothetical ferrule (Fig. n,
no. 9). Such forms, though commonest in the British
Isles and probably native there, are also found in
Northern France and as far south as Charente.
Related to our socketed knives is a curious socketed
instrument whose leaf-shaped blade is bent round in a
semicircle. Outside Great Britain the type is found in
Normandy and perhaps Switzerland (Fig. 1 1, no. 10).
RAZORS
It is quite possible to shave with a flint blade, and
some predynastic flints were undeniably utilized in this
way. The early Egyptian metal razors exactly copy
these flint forms. One type, confined to the Early
Dynastic period, was rectangular with four bevelled
edges. Another form, going back to Late Predynastic
times, looks like a broad double-edged knife with a short
tang. Probably most were sharpened along one edge
only as is certainly the case with the specimens from
Queen Hetep-heres' tomb. A very similar little imple-
ment has recently been found in early Sumerian tombs.
The Mesopotamian razors, always unfortunately in bad
preservation, are regularly found in pairs; it is uncertain
CBA
98 TYPOLOGY
whether both edges were sharp. In the Aegean area the
earliest certain razors date from the L.M. Ill period.
The majority are one-edged (Fig. 12, no. i) but there
are double-edged specimens in which the handle was
riveted directly on to the blade without a tang.
The majority of European razors belong to the same
family. In the earlier graves of the so-called Siculan II
period, containing Mycenaean vases imported from
Greece, we find a long blade with slightly concave sides
and an indentation at the lower end (Fig. 12, no. 3).
The purpose of the indent was perhaps to allow the
forefinger to feel the skin while shaving. In any case
it is a prominent feature in nearly all European double-
edged razors. In contemporary North Italian imple-
ments the indent is much more pronounced, and, above,
a wide slit separates the two blades. An openwork
handle, generally terminating in a loop and cast in one
piece with the blade, was attached to these Italian
razors (Fig. 12, no. 5). They belong to the Middle
Bronze Age. Rather later a small group of razors
appears in Franconia and Western Bohemia with a very
broad double-edged blade, sometimes at least divided
by a slit near the end, and an openwork handle cast in
one piece with it (Fig. 12, no. 6). Crude razors of this
pattern are found at a relatively later date in Holland
and Eastern France (Ni&vre and Rhone). But the
contemporary Central European razors of phase E have
already grown into developed horseshoe-shaped blades
(Fig. 12, no. 7).
In Upper Italy, on the other hand, during the Late
Bronze Age and first phase of the Early Iron Age
(Villanova culture), the razor assumes a rectangular
outline, preserving the indent in the lower end as an
almost circular aperture and provided with a loop of
TYPOLOGY
99
7-2
IOO TYPOLOGY
twisted wire riveted on to the blade as handle (Fig. 12,
no. 8). The same type is found in South Italy and Sicily,
but in that island a type, derived from the earlier native
form, but with wider blade, more pronounced slit
between the edges and a flat tang for handle, is also
encountered in the later tombs of the Siculan II period.
Similar forms occur in Southern France (Ari£ge and
Charente) and probably give a clue to the ancestry of
our British razors (as).
The latter resemble a maple leaf in form. A tang
to take the handle projects from the base of the blade
and is often continued downwards by a wide midrib
along its face. In the opposite end is a deep V-shaped
indent and just behind it a circular eyelet. Though
generally Late Bronze Age in date, one such blade,
though without the round eyelet, was found with rapiers
and palstaves in Scotland (60). It is generally believed that
these razors belong to the group of foreign forms
introduced into Britain by invaders arriving at the
beginning of the Late Bronze Age. The affinities of
our razors in any case seem to lie rather with Sicily
and the Western Mediterranean than with the countries
east of the Rhine.
While the standard European razors of the Bronze
Age were double-edged, there is a series in Scandinavia
with only one blade. Such are doubtless in the last
resort derived from the normal Mycenaean implement
(Fig. 12, no. n, cf. i).
TWEEZERS
Another surer but certainly more painful method of
removing the facial hairs was to pull them out with
tweezers. Depilatory tweezers, formed essentially of a
bronze ribbon bent double and rather wider at the ends
TYPOLOGY 101
than at the middle, were largely used in predynastic
Egypt and precede razors in Crete and the Cyclades,
appearing there in Early Aegean times. In Central
Europe and Scandinavia, tweezers, allied to the fore-
going, were adopted in the Middle Bronze Age, slightly
preceding the razors, though curiously enough razors
and tweezers are not seldom found together in the same
grave. Such metal tweezers are very rare in Britain but
appear at the same time as the razors in the Late Bronze
Age.
A different type of tweezer, consisting of two strips
of metal brazed together, was current in Mesopotamia
and India about 3000 B.C. They are found as components
of toilet-sets, hung on a ring together with a pricking
instrument and an ear-scoop (8). As their ends are very
narrow, these Asiatic tweezers probably served a
different purpose to the Egyptian, perhaps catching
lice. Structurally, a curious pair of bone tweezers from
an Early Bronze Age grave in England resembles the
Asiatic group.
SICKLES
All metal sickles go back in the last resort to the
so-called jaw-bone sickle formed by inserting serrated
flint blades into the dental cavity of some domestic
animal. No jaw-bones thus equipped have ever been
found, but Egypt has yielded a wooden mount, armed
with flints, shaped in imitation of a jaw-bone, and
similarly formed clay sickles are common in prediluvian
deposits in Mesopotamia. As a result of this origin a
hollow arc-shaped cutting edge is universal in the metal
sickles, but three main groups can be distinguished by
the method of hafting the blade.
In the oldest Mesopotamian metal sickle the blade
IO2 TYPOLOGY
was continued into a flat tang which was doubled over
to form a loop. The same type is found in Anatolia in
Troy VI, and a variant appears in the Late Bronze Age
of the Caucasus and Transylvania.
In the commonest North European type, found also
in Southern Germany, Bohemia, Eastern France and
England, there is no tang. The blade is reinforced by a
couple of ridges parallel to it on the back, and the handle
is attached with the aid of a knob projecting on one face
near the butt. It is therefore termed the button sickle
(Fig. 13, no. i). This type certainly goes back to the
Middle Bronze Age.
During the Late Bronze Age it was replaced in
France and Central Europe by a type of Italian or
Hungarian origin. In the latter the form of the blade
is the same, but the button is replaced by a wide tang
that makes an angle with the blade. The handle was
attached by a rivet and is kept in place by a pair of ridges
running along the edges of the tang (Fig. 13, no. 2).
The socketed sickle may have been evolved out of
the foregoing, since its tubular socket makes a similar
angle with the blade. The type was certainly invented in
the British Isles where it is common in hoards of the
Late Bronze Age (Fig. 13, no. 3). Stray specimens,
presumably British exports, occur beyond the Channel
in Northern France, the Swiss lake-dwellings and Upper
Italy. The device even reached Sardinia where a local
variant on it occurs.
HARNESS
The harnessing of animal motive power was, as
already remarked, one of the most momentous achieve-
ments of the Bronze Age. Yet of all the gear that must
have been used in the application of that new motive
TYPOLOGY
103
Fig. 13. (i) Button sickle, England, Middle Bronze Age.
(2) Grooved sickle, Italy, Middle Bronze Age.
(3) Socketed sickle, Ireland, Late Bronze Age.
(4) Hooked sickle, Transylvania, Late Bronze Age.
(5) Bugle-shaped object from harness, England, Late Bronze Age.
(6) Reconstruction of bit with horn cheek-pieces and wooden bar.
(7) Jointed bronze bit, Swiss lakes, Late Bronze Age. All J
104 TYPOLOGY
power the only recognizable elements that have come
down to us from Bronze Age Europe are bits, or to be
exact, portions of bits,
It is still uncertain how the Sumerians controlled the
asses that drew their early chariots. Even as late as
the Eighteenth Dynasty in Egypt it is possible that the
chariot horses were governed merely by nose-ropes;
for though several royal tombs have yielded us chariots
and harness, no bits have as yet come to light. The
earliest known metal bit comes from a Late Mycenaean
tomb at Mycenae. Like modern bits, it consisted of a
jointed metal rod that passed between the horse's jaws.
But in addition it was equipped at either end with flat
pieces of metal, termed cheek-pieces, to which the reins
were attached by loops. When the reins were drawn
tight the cheek-pieces would compress the animal's
jaws, the pain in the case before us being augmented by
metal spikes on the inner faces of the cheek-pieces (6).
No such metal bits are known during the pure
Bronze Age of continental Europe. But from the
"terremare" of Upper Italy and Middle Bronze Age
deposits in Hungary, Germany and Sweden we possess
pieces of tine or horn with several perforations that are
believed to have been attached as cheek-pieces to the
ends of a bar of wood or a stout twisted strip of hide
that constituted the bit proper (Fig. 13, no. 6). Similar
horn cheek-pieces become quite common in the Late
Bronze Age and even reach Britain in company with
other continental types. But in Switzerland and
Scandinavia by that phase of the Late Bronze Age,
termed by Reinecke Hallstatt A (Bronze Age E), and in
the contemporary Early Iron Age deposits of Upper
Italy, bronze bits were being already manufactured.
These all have metal cheek-pieces, generally bent rods
TYPOLOGY 105
with loops at the sides or slits through them to take
the reins (Fig. 13, no. 7). Only later in the Hallstatt
period do we meet examples of the modern form of bit
terminating in rings.
ORNAMENTS
The ornaments worn during the Bronze Age are far
too varied to be discussed in detail. They are, moreover,
specialized into local groups that can best be mentioned
later in dealing with the several cultures. Some, how-
ever, throw an unique light on cultural relations or
serve as invaluable chronological guides. Such must
be briefly described here.
PINS
Pins were used for fastening garments over a curiously
restricted area during the earlier parts of the Bronze
Age. Their use must obviously be correlated with a
particular costume — an untailored cloak or mantle,
worn over the shoulders and fastened in front by one
or two pins. As a matter of fact ancient representations
or lucky finds in peat-bogs afford positive proof of the
wearing of such a garb among the Sumerians and the
prehistoric Danes. Pins, and the dress they imply,
were worn in Mesopotamia from the earliest Sumerian
times and then throughout Asia Minor and Anatolia.
They were also freely used in the Cyclades and on the
Greek mainland during Early Aegean times, but only
very rarely and in an immature form in Crete. Pins
are equally rare in centres of metallurgy connected with
maritime trade westward — Sicily, Sardinia, Spain and
Britain. On the other hand they were adopted together
with metallurgy in Central Europe, whence the local
types spread widely as a result of ethnic movements.
IO6 TYPOLOGY
To keep the pin in position a thread was passed
through or tied on to its head, looped round the fold of
the stuff to be fastened, and the end wound round the
shaft again. The devices employed for attaching the
thread provide the most workable basis for a classifica-
tion of pins.
(l) PINS WITH LOOPED HEADS
In this class the head itself is a loop through which
the thread may be passed. The simplest way of making
such a pin is to take a piece of wire and bend over
the top end or head. Generally the head is hammered
out flat before being bent over.1 The result is termed
a roll-head pin (Rollennadel) (Fig. 14, no. i). Such
are found from the earliest times in Sumer and through-
out the Asiatic Bronze Age province and its Central and
North European extensions, A natural development of
this is the shepherd's-crook pin distinctive of the Bronze
Age in East Central Europe. A roll-head pin might be
made more ornate by simply widening the flat head.
From merely broadening the head materially in this way
arises the racket pin (Rudernadel}. This variant is found
in Sumer before 3000 B.C. (Fig. 14, no. 3), then in the
Early and Middle Bronze Ages of Hungary and Central
Europe and later in the Caucasus, In the Early Bronze
Age of Central Europe the decorative effect was further
enhanced by trimming off the angles of the flat plate
till it became a perfect circle (a little tang being left
projecting opposite the shaft to form the loop), the
disk pin (Scheibennadel}. The disk is often decorated
with an engraved cross. By casting the disk as an
1 At first this flat head may just have been part of the original ribbon
from which the wire was manufactured by the torsion process described
on p. 37.
TYPOLOGY 107
openwork wheel with an ear to represent the original
folded loop, the wheel pin was created in the Rhine
valley during the Middle Bronze Age (Fig. 14, no. 4).
The type was exported throughout Central Europe as
far as Upper Italy, Poland and Denmark.
An earlier variant of the disk pin, also formed by
trimming up a racket pin, was the trefoil pin of the
Rhone valley. The bilobate and trilobate pins of the
Middle Bronze Age in Upper Italy may be derived
from it in the same way as the wheel pin from the disk
type.
A safer loop might be produced on a wire pin by
bending the top over and twisting it round the shaft,
producing the knot-headed pin (SMeifennadef). The
principle was known both in predynastic Egypt, in
early Sumer and in prehistoric cities on the Indus. It
was applied to the manufacture of pins in Cyprus and
Troy II. Thence the type was diffused up the Danube to
Hungary, Bohemia and Silesia, where it became common
from the beginning of the age of metals and throughout
the Middle Bronze Age (Fig. 14, no. 5). By imitating
the knot-headed pin in a casting the Aunjetitz pin
(Bohmische Osennadef} was created in Bohemia. It
had an inverted conical head surmounted by a cast
loop or ear (Fig. 14, no. 6). The ring-headed pin seems
a later derivative of the same fundamental type.
(2) TOGGLE OR EYELET PINS
In a second series the thread was passed through
a hole in the pin-shaft near its head. The shaft hadt
generally to be widened where it was pierced. In
Mesopotamia by 3000 B.C. it was hammered out flat,
and the flattened surface perforated (Fig, 14, no. 2).
The wide flat part, often called the neck, is frequently
Fig. 14. (i) Roll-headed pin, Kish, Early Sumerian.
(2) Toggle pin, Kish, Early Sumerian.
(3) Racket pin, Ur, Early Sumerian.
(4) Wheel pin, South-west Germany, Middle Bronze Age.
(5) Knot-headed pin, Bohemia, Early Bronze Age.
(6) Aunjetitz pin, Bohemia, Early Bronze Age.
(7) Pin with bent disk head, Bohemia, Late Bronze Age.
(8) Sunflower pin, Ireland, Late Bronze Age.
(9) Pin with lateral loop, England, Late Bronze Age.
(10) Ribbed pin, Alsace, Late Bronze Age.
(n) Vase-headed pin, Bavaria, Late Bronze Age.
(12) Violin-bow fibula, Switzerland, Middle Bronze Age.
(13) Simple arc fibula, Italy, Late Bronze Age.
(14) Hungarian fibula with looped bow, Late Bronze Age.
(15) Elbow fibula, Siculan II.
(16) Two-piece fibula, Denmark, Middle Bronze Age.
(17) Two-piece fibula, Denmark, Late Bronze Age.
TYPOLOGY
109
110 TYPOLOGY
engraved with crosses and herring-bone patterns. Above
the neck the shaft was normally bent over. It was
generally surmounted with a globular bead of lapis.
Eyelet pins with bulbous, or in Cyprus mushroom,
heads, cast in one piece with the shaft, very early found
acceptance in Syria, Cyprus, Troy and South Russia.
Eyelet pins did not reach Central Europe till the Middle
Bronze Age, but are very characteristic of that period.
The round swollen necks of these pins are decorated
with just the same herring-bone and cruciform patterns
as the Sumerian pins of the fourth millennium.
In South Germany the eyelet pins seldom have a
specialized head. In Hungary, on the other hand, they
are surmounted with mushroom heads. In some mush-
room pins the eyelet is formed by a spur projecting from
the side of the shaft to meet the (separately cast) head.
Allied to these is a form belonging to the very end of
the Middle Bronze Age : the flat disk head is cast apart
from the shaft and with a socket fitted on to the bent
shaft so that the latter is parallel to the plane of the
disk. The eye is formed by a looped strand of finer wire,
one end of which was cast on to the shaft, the other
tucked into the head's socket (Fig. 14, no. 7). In its
Bohemian home the disk was generally decorated with
an engraved star pattern. A variant with no loop or
eyelet reached Scandinavia in the latest Bronze Age
there (Montelius IV and V) and Great Britain. These
late pins, termed sunflower pins, are decorated only
with concentric circles upon the disk (Fig. 14, no. 8).
The sunflower pin is the only type at any time at all
common in the British Isles till our own Iron Age
began.
Allied to the pins with perforated neck is a rare type
with a lateral loop on the neck. It is found occasionally
TYPOLOGY III
in Early Bronze Age graves in North Syria. Then there
are isolated examples from Bohemia belonging to the
very end of the Middle Bronze Age, from Denmark
later still, from the great Iron Age cemetery at Hall-
statt in Upper Austria and from France undated. Yet
the type has been found in Scotland in company
with Middle Bronze Age rapiers and palstaves and
a razor (Fig. 14, no. 9).
Carefully to be distinguished from the foregoing
is the "East German eyelet pin" found in the Late
Bronze Age urnfields. Its distinctive feature is a
lateral spur on the neck perforated with a hole parallel
to the shaft. It is probably derived from a pin common
in Hungary and Central Europe in the Early and
Middle Bronze Ages with a bulbous head perforated
with a hole running down from the crown to the side of
the shaft. This type may be inspired by Syrian bulb-
headed pins.
(3) PINS WITH MERELY DECORATIVE HEADS
In a third family of pins the securing thread was merely
twisted round the head; the latter, therefore, need not
be perforated but is generally decorative. From ancient
Sumerian and Early Cycladic graves come pins with
animal heads, while others from Troy II were sur-
mounted by miniature vases. In an important group
extending from Turkestan to Italy the head is just a
spiral disk. In some Early Cycladic specimens two
spirals sprout out from the top of the shaft, and the
same happens in Italy during the Middle Bronze Age
and then in Central Europe, where spiral-headed pins
are late in the Late Bronze Age.
Indeed, throughout continental Europe loops and
eyelets went out of fashion during the Late Bronze Age.
112 TYPOLOGY
The older eyelet pins are replaced by forms, often of
gigantic size, with a collar of ribs or a big head in the
shape of a vase, a poppy-head, a turban or a globe. Very
distinctive of the second phase of the Late Bronze Age
(Kraft E) are the Swiss pins whose globular heads are
adorned with inlaid "eyes". Later, fashions changed
again ; the giant types disappear, and the heads of the
rest shrink.
SAFETY-PINS OR FIBULAE
A logical corrolary of the pins kept in position by a
loop of thread round the fold of clothing pierced by the
pin was the safety-pin or brooch, technically known by the
Latin name of fibula. There are two methods by which
a safety-pin might be arrived at. You might take a wiry
pin and bend back the top of the shaft over the fold
of clothing to meet the lower part of the shaft and
catch the point. Alternatively the thread passing
through the eyelet of a toggle pin might be replaced by
a length of wire which would likewise be twisted so as
to catch the point. The first plan produces our safety-
pin or one-piece fibula; the alternative gives rise to
the so-called two-membered safety-pin. These two
series seem to be independent, but both start about the
same time, Middle Bronze Age or circa 1350 B.C., and
moreover at opposite ends of the amber trade route. The
one-piece safety-pin originated in Italy, Bohemia, or,
on the latest theory, Mycenaean Greece; the two-
membered fibula started about the same time in Den-
mark. It is therefore on the face of it unlikely that the
two types are really autonomous and spontaneous
growths.
TYPOLOGY 113
ONE PIECE SAFETY-PINS.
In Late Minoan Crete people wore long pins, with
a twisted shaft but no distinct head, whose upper parts
were just hooked over. Blinkenberg(36) and Myres(3?)
believe that these pins were turned into fibulae by the
simple expedient of bending the upper end into a hook
to catch and also guard the point. This terminal hook
is thus the prototype of the catch-plate. To make a really
workable safety-pin the simple hooked end had to be
modified so as to give a protection to the point, and a
spring had to be introduced to bring the point back
into the catch. The fibulae from pure L.M. Ill a tombs
in Greece have a bow parallel to the pin and a catch-
plate formed either by hammering out the end of the
wire flat or by coiling it in a spiral (Fig. 14, no. 12).
Such fibulae are known as the violin-bow type and form
the starting-point for several series, developing along
divergent lines in different regions. The greater part
of this evolution lies outside the scope of this book, in
the Iron Age, but some early forms may be sketched
here.
Violin-bow fibulae, representing the primary stage
of the safety-pin, are found outside Greece in Middle
Bronze Age deposits in Italy and Sicily, and rather
later in Bosnia, the Tyrol and Switzerland. There
are two specimens from Central Europe, alleged to
come from Early Bronze Age graves, but the circum-
stances of their discovery are doubtful.
The changes affect principally the form of the bow,
aiming at making it more ornate or capable of catching
a thicker fold of clothing. In Greece during the My-
cenaean period the bow was widened to a leaf-shape.
Rather later a series of fie-ure-8 twists were introduced
114 TYPOLOGY
in the wire bow. The latter type occurs on both sides
of the Adriatic and in North-western Hungary (Fig. 14,
no. 14). In the last-named region it gave rise to a series
of highly elaborate variants in the Late Bronze Age and
Hallstatt period.
The main direction of evolution went towards in-
creasing the space between pin and bow to allow of
more stuff being gripped. This was effected by four
methods, giving rise to four main families that consti-
tute the second evolutionary phase: A I, prolonging
the catch-plate vertically, giving the asymmetrical bow
fibula; A 25 bending the bow into a semicircle, producing
the arc fibula; A 3, twisting the bow up into an elbow
and elongating the stilt, yielding the elbow and serpen-
tine fibulae, or A 4, adding coils to the spring, leading
to the harp fibula. Of these only the last version
preserves the spiral catch-plate. The first two, on the
other hand, as well as some late violin-bow types, may
have small shoulders or beads at either end of the bow.
The arc fibula (Fig. 14, no. 13) appears in Greece
already during L.M. Ill b times and in the Late Bronze
Age of Italy and Bosnia, and leads to many variants in
the Iron Age. The elbow fibula (a gomito] (Fig. 14,
no. 15) is found in Sicily in graves of the Siculan II
period slightly later than those containing Mycenaean
vases. In the Early Iron Age of Cyprus a kindred form
is found. A rather later Sicilian type (serpeggianti ad
occhio) introduces a second loop at the root of the stilt
where the elbow comes. It seems influenced by a
version of the arc fibula, with a loop at the base of the
catch-plate, found during the Early Iron Age in Crete
and Illyria. Finally the harp fibula, appearing in a
rudimentary form in the latest Bronze Age of Styria,
characterizes the early Hallstatt period in the Eastern
TYPOLOGY 115
Alps and Lower Austria. Contemporary with it in
Styria appears the earliest spectacle brooch, a type
distinctive of the true Hallstatt culture and of the
Geometric period in Greece. It consists of a strand of
wire coiled into a pair of spiral disks ; from the centre of
one the wire, sharpened to make the pin, is brought back
across the other to engage in its end.
The modifications introduced during phase III of
the safety-pin's evolution include, in the case of arc
fibulae, threading beads on to the bow or imitating such
in metal bulbs cast on it (Greece and Italy), widening
the catch-plate (Greece and Illyria) or lengthening it
(Italy), introducing a second loop at the root of the
catch-plate (Greece and Illyria, also Sicily), decorating the
bows with raised ribs (Upper Italy and Switzerland), etc.
These three stages can be approximately dated.
Stage I is purely Mycenaean and accordingly begins
before 1300 B.C.; even stage II began before the end
of the Mycenaean age, about iioo; while stage III
was already well advanced in sub-Mycenaean times by
1000 B.C.
TWO-MEMBER FIBULAE
The evolution of the two-piece fibulae follows in
the main the same lines as that of the one-member
group. During the first or Middle Bronze Age phase
(Sophus Miiller, 3) the bow, either of twisted wire
or leaf-shaped, is parallel to the pin and ends in two
spiral disks or just two hooks. The pin is just a
normal toggle pin with swollen, perforated neck and
simple, club-shaped head (Fig. 14, no. 16). This
stage is virtually confined to Denmark. During the
Late Bronze Age divergent developments set in as the
device spread. In Scandinavia and North Germany the
Fig. 15. (i) Heavy ribbed armlet, Bavaria, Late Bronze Age. J
• (2) Gold armlet, Ireland, Middle to Late Bronze Age. J
(3) Hungarian armlet, with spiral ends, Middle Bronze Age. \
(4) Horizontally ribbed armlet, Hungary, Middle Bronze Age.
(5) Hooked double armlet, England, Middle Bronze Age. |
(6) Spiral-ended anklet, Alsace, Late Bronze Age. \
(7) Ingot torque, Bohemia, Early Bronze Age. :{
(8) Gold ear-ring, Troy II. J
(9) Twisted gold armlet, England. \
(10) Spiral-ended finger-ring, South Germany. £
(11) Helical wire tutulus, Bavaria, Early Bronze Age. \
(12) Spiked tutulus, Hungary, Middle Bronze Age. J
(13, 14) Gold lock-rings, Early and Middle Bronze Age. J
TYPOLOGY
119
7,8
9,10
I2O TYPOLOGY
of the Swiss lake-dwellings during the last
phase of the Bronze Age (Kraft E).
Bracelets with spiral ends were characteristic of East
Central Europe, Hungary, Galicia, East Germany and
Scandinavia during the Middle and Late Bronze Age.
The most handsome Middle Bronze Age type in the
former area terminates in opposed spiral disks. Such
rings were worn on the upper arm as the traces of wear
indicate. Later Hungarian specimens, belonging already
to phase E of the Bronze Age, have double-spiral ends.
A variant, also with double-spiral ends but a ribbon-
like body decorated with cast horizontal ribs or engraved
triangles, is, however, found already in Middle Bronze
Age deposits of Scandinavia, South-west Germany and
Bohemia.
Two types of bracelet formed from a doubled piece
of wire deserve notice. In the variety current in Central
Europe from Early Bronze Age times the ends of the
wire are twisted ; in a British type of the Middle Bronze
Age, the loop where the wire is bent back is relatively
wide and the ends are twisted over and hooked into it
(Fig. 15, no. 5). Neither type is penannular; both
approximate rather to the cylinders.
Broad armlets of plate bronze, even in width all over and
decorated with cast horizontal ribs or engraved triangles,
appear already in the Early Bronze Age of Central
Europe. Analogous types, generally narrower and with
sharper ridges, are found in contemporary deposits in
France and Britain. Such wide armlets may have taken
the place of the stone wrist-guards worn by the archers
of the Bell-beaker culture in the Copper Age to protect
them from the recoil of the bow-string. The hori-
zontally ribbed armlet persists into the Late Bronze
Age, even reaching Scandinavia. But the later Central
TYPOLOGY 121
European specimens generally have rounded ends
(Fig. 15, no. 4).
East of the Rhine the tendency was to replace broad
armlets by cylinders. Cylinders of narrow copper
ribbon had been worn even in the Copper Age and,
made of stouter ribbon, appear in Early Bronze Age
hoards. By the Middle Bronze Age they had become
very popular, particularly in East Germany and Hun-
gary. Here the ribbon, hammered out to nearly an
inch or so in width, is decorated with punctured patterns
and strengthened with a midrib which is prolonged
beyond either end of the ribbon and coiled into spiral
disks. The type outlasts the Bronze Age and reappears
in Early Iron Age graves in Italy and the Caucasus.
Cylinders of the same structure could be worn on the
legs.
A series of anklets, developed in the Upper Rhine
valley, is interesting owing to its well-marked typo-
logical evolution. The oldest form, going back to
Reinecke's phase B, is a simple piece of stout wire
coiled into spiral disks at either end. Next, the wire
body is replaced by narrow ribbon, the spiral ends
remaining wiry. Finally in phases D and E the ribbon
of the body is widened and the wiry ends are bent back
and carried round for one turn before being coiled into
spirals (Fig. 1 5, no. 6). This late type reaches the Upper
Danube on the one hand and the French Departments
of Aube, Marne and Cote d'Or on the other.
There remains a series of ornaments with wiry bodies,
worn principally on the neck, which are of special
importance owing to early parallels on the fringes of
the Oriental civilizations. A penannular ring of stout
wire with the ends hammered flat and bent back into
loops (Fig. 1 6, no. 7) is represented by a number of
122 TYPOLOGY
specimens in a hoard found at Byblos in North Syria
and dated roughly about 1800 B.C. There are stray
specimens from Egypt of a similar age, and later the
type was common in the Caucasus. Just the same rings
are found in the very earliest Bronze Age deposits of
Hungary and Central Europe. Here they were some-
times worn as collars and also, as noted on p. 30,
used as ingots. They are therefore termed ingot torques.
From Central Europe the type reached the valleys of
the Rhine and Rhone. Ingot torques remained current
throughout the Bronze Age, but some of the later
specimens are made of twisted rectangular wire,1 a
feature also observed on certain early Syrian specimens.
The effect of torsion was imitated in casting on some
European examples.
A series of ingot torques diminishing in size might
be fastened together by pins through the terminal loops
to form gorgets. Composite gorgets of this pattern are
actually found as late as phase E in South-west Germany.
But imitations thereof in sheet bronze with the ends
rolled up into tubes were current in Switzerland and
Scandinavia during the Middle Bronze Age. The Swiss
collars are decorated with engraved rectilinear patterns
and maintain the same width throughout their circum-
ference. The Scandinavian, on the other hand, are shaped
so as to be widest in the middle. The earlier ones show
horizontal ribs in front, reminiscent of the originally
separate neck-rings, but panels at either end are richly
ornamented with engraved spirals. Related to the
foregoing are some collars of thin sheet gold from
Brittany and Portugal. Instead of ribs, these exhibit in
1 The name torque, derived from the Latin torqueo, I twist, should
strictly be applied only to such twisted rings, but is in practice used for
all neck-rings whether smooth or twisted.
TYPOLOGY 123
front, slits, reproducing the effect of the originally
separate rings.
A hoard found in the ruins of Troy II included a
gold collar or bracelet of twisted rectangular wire with
hooked ends, and a similar torque of silver wire has
come to light in an Early Helladic grave on Levkas.
Twisted ornaments of exactly the same pattern in bronze,
or more often in gold, are common during the Middle
Bronze Age in the British Isles, As an alternative to
quadrangular wire, simple or compound ribbon was
sometimes twisted thus (Fig. 1 6). The composite ribbon
employed has a X -shaped section and has been made by
bending a strip of gold ribbon at right angles longitudin-
ally, joining two such strips along the keel and then
twisting the result. From Great Britain these torques
were exported to Brittany, Northern France and
probably Scandinavia.
In the last-named country in any case a local series,
in which the torsion effect is generally produced by
cast ridges, began in the Late Bronze Age. It attained
its richest development in that belated Bronze Age that
corresponds to the Hallstatt period farther south. By
then the torsion was often not continuous in the same
direction, but portions of the ring had been twisted in
opposite ways (Fig. 17, no. 6). Finger-rings were made
in the same style.
Another series of British neck ornaments belonging
to the Early Bronze Age is allied in form to the
Scandinavian gorgets already described. I refer to the
so-called lunulae of gold. As their name implies, they
are crescent-shaped pieces of thin gold plate. The horns
are richly decorated with the rectilinear patterns, so
characteristic of the Early Bronze Age throughout
Western Europe, and terminate in flat catches. Over
124
TYPOLOGY
Fig. 16. (i) Gold torque, Scotland, Middle Bronze Age. J
(2) Twisted gold armlet, Scotland, Middle Bronze Age (after
Anderson). £
TYPOLOGY 125
sixty lunulae have been found in Ireland but there are
six from Scotland. The latter particularly resemble
both in plan and ornament the contemporary jet neck-
laces found in the same country. It has therefore been
suggested very plausibly that the lunulae originated in
Scotland as metal copies of such necklaces, Ireland
being only a secondary centre. Thence in any case they
were exported to Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Scandinavia
and North Germany (Fig. 1 9).
FINGER-RINGS
One of the simplest conceivable metal ornaments is a
ring of wire or ribbon to fit on the finger. As bone and
stone finger-rings go far back in the Stone Age, early
metal copies are only to be expected. They are so wide-
spread as to have little cultural significance, and only a
few specialized types need mention here.
The Minoans of Crete, copying the Sumerians and
Egyptians, used to mark the ownership of a packet or
authenticate inscribed tablets by the impression of a
seal. This was at first worn on a string, passing in one
class through a loop at the back. During Middle
Minoan times the loop was enlarged into a hoop to
fit the finger. The oval seal part (technically called
the bezel) with its long axis at right angles to the
hoop, was of course beautifully engraved like the bead
or button seals of gems or ivory. No seals nor signet
rings were made by the European barbarians till late
in the Iron Age, but in the Late Bronze Age rings of
bronze leaf, generally horizontally ribbed, were made
of bronze ribbon [so trimmed as to be much wider at
the side worn on the back of the finger than on the
other. Such rings, common in South-west Germany
and Switzerland, doubtless imitate Aegean signets.
126 TYPOLOGY
A truly European ring, common in Central Europe
from the Early Bronze Age onwards, was formed of a
strand of gold or bronze wire doubled with the ends
twisted together, coiled into a little cylinder, like the
wire bracelets already mentioned. During the Middle
Bronze Age a very handsome ring of bronze ribbon,
terminating in opposed spiral disks, characterized the
Tumulus culture of Western Germany, South-western
Bohemia, Austria and Slovakia (Fig. 1 5, no. 10). In the
Late Bronze Age a more wiry version was in vogue also
farther east in the urnfields of Moravia and Hungary.
In Britain we find in hoards of the Middle Bronze
Age small coils of massive gold with imitation torsion
that may have been worn on the fingers but possibly
served as money.
BUTTONS, CLASPS, STUDS AND TUTULI
Even in Early Minoan times, buttons of some perish-
able material, overlaid with gold, were being worn in
Crete. The little convex disks of gold leaf, that once had
sheathed them and now alone survive, are each pierced
with two thread-holes. Similar hollow button-covers,
generally of bronze, appear in Hungary even in the
Early Bronze Age, and in the Middle Bronze Age
become very plentiful throughout Central Europe. In
the Late Bronze Age they were gradually replaced by a
more solid button, generally flat, with a cast loop on the
back instead of the thread-holes.
Buttons of stone, bone and ivory have a longer
history. A very famous type, common all through
Western Europe and right up to Scandinavia and the
Tisza during the Copper Age, is conical and pierced on
the flat side with two holes that converge to meet in a V,
TYPOLOGY 127
Such buttons with V -perforation in jet or amber re-
mained popular in Britain during the Early Bronze Age
(Fig. 1 8, no. 2).
Studs of stone, shaped like two disks joined by a short
cylinder, were used in a rudimentary form, perhaps as
lip-plugs, in prediluvian Mesopotamia and reached
Crete even before the local Bronze Age began. A
developed variant on this in jet was popular in Britain
during the Early Bronze Age. Later metal studs of the
same plan were largely manufactured in Scandinavia.
Buckles of jet were employed in Great Britain during
the Early Bronze Age. They resemble an oval rod with
a longitudinal slit.
For fastening the girdle very handsome clasps were
used in Central and North Europe during the Middle
and Late Bronze Ages. A pretty form, current chiefly in
Wtirtemberg and on the Upper Rhine, was a hook of
doubled wire whose ends were coiled in spiral disks.
This was replaced in the Late Bronze Age by a flat
metal plate, circular save for a narrow tang that was
bent over to form the hook; a loop is attached to the
back of the disk at the centre. In the Rhone valley
during the latest Bronze Age the type was further elabo-
rated, the tang growing into a richly decorated oval plate,
while the original disk, no less ornate, developed three
additional hooked tangs,
A very distinctive hook was used by Scandinavian
warriors of the Middle Bronze Age for attaching the
scabbard to the girdle. The hook is massive, cross-pieces
project just below its point and its base is a solid disk.
The girdles themselves might sometimes be all of
sheet metal. There is an example in beaten silver from
Byblos in Syria. Magnificently engraved girdles of
hammered bronze were being manufactured in Upper
128 TYPOLOGY
Italy at the beginning of the Iron Age, and others occur
in the contemporary Bronze Age of Hungary. But
normally the girdles were of leather or wool, though
often decked with metal ornaments. During the Early
Bronze Age of Bohemia hammered metal plates were
probably thus employed; they are either shield-shaped
or circular with a hollow dome-shaped boss in the
centre. They are decorated with engraved triangles
arranged in parallel rows or on the circumference of
concentric circles. Holes near the rim enabled them to
be sewn on. The latter type persists throughout the
Middle Bronze Age, spreading to South-west Germany
and Scandinavia, to be decorated in each region in the
appropriate local style.
Early Bronze Age graves in Lower Bavaria contain
extraordinary helical pyramids of coiled bronze wire,
executed in a technique already exemplified on a smaller
scale in the jewellery from the earliest Sumerian graves
at Ur(8> (Fig. 15, no. 1 1). Copying the helices by casting
produced a metal disk with a spike in the centre
surrounded by concentric ridges (43). A small bent-over
tab projects from the edge of the disk for their attach-
ment to girdles or strings (Fig. 15, no. 12). This
"spiked tutulus" is very common in the Middle Bronze
Age of Hungary and Central Europe. Scandinavian
women wore a similarly shaped ornament on their
girdles, but in the North the disk is often very large,
1 1 inches in diameter, and decorated with spirals (Fig.
1 7, no. 2). In the Late Bronze Age of the North the size
is still further increased, and the central spike becomes
a regular little pillar surmounted with a knob. A bar
across the base of the hollow pillar provides a means of
attachment in lieu of the older thread-holes. Quite
possibly the so-called hanging vases of the latest Bronze
TYPOLOGY 129
Age in Scandinavia are just exaggerations of this type
of tutulus (Fig. 17, no 4).
Cones of rolled bronze leaf, or more elaborate
versions thereof made by casting, were hung like tassels
on the ends of woollen girdles.
Besides stuff and metal plate girdles, double chains
were already being worn in Bohemia even in the Early
Bronze Age. At that date all the links were just
circular rings. In the Late Bronze Age farther west
rings alternate with wide links of ribbon.
EAR-RINGS AND LOCK-RINGS
All European ear-rings and hair-rings of any interest
go back in the last resort to Mesopotamian types (8). In
the very early Sumerian graves recently excavated at
Ur of the Chaldees, Woolley found several forms that
constitute the starting-points of our series. The simplest
type is a penannular gold ring, one end of which has
been hammered out till it is boat-shaped while the other
is sharp. The wide end is sometimes decorated with
filigree work, at others exaggerated to monstrous pro-
portions and duplicated. Contemporary with these
undoubted ear-rings are little open spirals, both ends of
which are boat-shaped (Fig. 15, no. 14). They were
perhaps twisted in the hair over the ears and may
provisionally be termed lock-rings. Identical spiral
lock-rings are known from Troy II, the Caucasus, South
Russia, Hungary and Central Europe. In the latter
region a variant grew up in which one end is bent back
upon itself. There are also wiry copies influenced by the
contemporary ear-rings.
The simple ear-ring with one boat-shaped end is
also found at Troy and in Hungary. At the former
site barbaric exaggerations lead to the gigantic basket
Fig. 17. (i) Bronze collar, Denmark, Middle Bronze Age. J
(2) Bronze tutulus, Denmark, Middle Bronze Age. J
(3) Bronze tutulus, Denmark, Middle Bronze Age. J
(4) Hanging vase (tutulus), Denmark, Late Bronze Age. £
(5) Bronze tutulus, Denmark, Late Bronze Age. j>
(6) Torque with alternating torsion, Denmark, Late Bronze Age.
(7) Gold "sun disk", Ireland, Late Bronze Age. |
(8) Penannular gold ornament, Ireland, Late Bronze Age. ^
TYPOLOGY
7 1
9-2
132 TYPOLOGY
ear-rings. These were made by soldering on to gold bars
a series of bent wire coils as shown in Fig. 1 5, no, 8,
the whole being embellished with rosettes and pendants.
The barbarians of the North, who were ignorant of
solder, imitated the Trojan type in two ways. In
Scotland during the Early Bronze Age the basket was
formed of a bent sheet of thin gold with a hook pro-
jecting from one long side. Such ear-rings have been
found as British exports in Belgium and Western
Poland, In the Early Bronze Age of Hungary and
Bohemia the gold wire coils that formed components of
the Trojan baskets were elaborated by themselves to
form the ear-ring (Fig. 15, no. 13). Thence they were
exported to the still Neolithic inhabitants of Denmark
in exchange for amber.
NECKLACES AND PENDANTS
Perhaps as early as Middle Palaeolithic times men
had pierced shells and strung them together as neck-
laces. Upper Palaeolithic man could also carve very
neat beads out of ivory for the same purpose. The
earliest Egyptians we know, the Badarians, could already
drill stone for beads and soon mastered even such hard
materials as carnelian and turquoise. An extraordinary
variety of beads and amulets were carved out of stone
or ivory. In prehistoric India and Mesopotamia, and
later in Crete and the Cyclades too, stone beads were
soon very popular. Stone beads and amulets based on
East Mediterranean models and bone copies thereof
were then very widely diffused throughout the Medi-
terranean basin and along the Atlantic coasts to Brittany
and Ireland in the Neolithic and Copper Ages, but had
practically gone out of use before the local Bronze Age
began. Along the Danube valley stone beads had never
TYPOLOGY
133
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134 TYPOLOGY
come into vogue at all. Hence in a study of the Bronze
Age in North-western and Central Europe only amber
and jet beads together with a few glazed ones imported
from the East Mediterranean need be considered.
Amber necklaces were largely worn in Denmark,
Great Britain and Central Europe, going back in the
first country to early in the New Stone Age. The most
popular form consisted of two or three strings of
almost spherical beads connected at intervals by flat
spacers. A spacer is a bead perforated with several
holes, usually parallel, designed to keep the several
strings of a necklace at the proper distance apart. The
English and Scottish jet necklaces are similar to the
foregoing but often more elaborate. Besides sphericals,
thin disks, long barrel-shaped beads and flattened
barrels with a little collar at either end were employed,
and the spacers were cut to various shapes and diagonally
perforated so that the necklace is broader on the throat
than behind the neck where it was fastened (Fig. 18,
no. i).
Even the earliest Egyptians could put a glaze on
stone beads, and before the beginning of the dynastic
epoch they had learned to cast beads of an opaque
vitreous material termed faience. The secret had also
been grasped in Mesopotamia and India before the
beginning of the fourth millennium. Instead of casting
a number of separate beads, it was found that the same
effect could be obtained more cheaply by moulding a
tube divided by grooves into six or eight segments. Thus
arose the so-called segmented bead which may have
been suggested by the manufacture of simple beads by
cutting into segments and then breaking off thin tubular
bones or the long roots of bovine teeth. Segmented
beads of faience are in any case known from Assur in
TYPOLOGY 135
Mesopotamia as early as the third millennium z.c\y and
appear in Crete during M.M. Ill and in Egypt under>
the New Kingdom (12). Analogous segmented beads of
bluish faience have been found as imports in South-
eastern Spain, England (Fig. 18, no. 4) and Poland.
In Mesopotamia metal pendants as well as beads
were hung on necklaces. These include gold hoops,
bearing wire decorations, and disks engraved and inlaid,
in both cases provided with a loop for suspension. We
find the same idea applied in Central Europe chiefly
during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. A strand of
wire, coiled into two spiral disks with a loop between
them like spectacles, goes back to the Copper Age, and
later a small cast wheel, possibly a solar symbol, became
very popular. Another pendant, very common during
the Middle Bronze Age in Hungary and adjoining
regions as far as the Rhine, is heart-shaped. It is
actually inspired by Minoan collar-segments of gold or
faience bearing a hybrid pattern, termed by Sir Arthur
Evans the sacral ivy-leaf.
Naturally, in addition to the foregoing, simpler
ornaments such as marine shells, Dentalium tubes, bored
teeth and tubes of sheet metal or coiled wire were
frequently worn.
VESSELS
Where metal was plentiful, it was used for the
manufacture of dishes, cups and ewers and even pails and
cauldrons. The majority were made of sheet-metal
hammered out. Cups and dishes of precious metals or
bronze could be made, as they are to-day, by simply
beating up a sheet of metal to the desired shape. For
larger vessels two or three sheets were shaped by
hammering and then riveted together. Handles too
136 TYPOLOGY
were /generally attached by rivets, but in the case of
gold ;and silver vessels they might be soldered on in the
Ancrient East and the Aegean. Spouts, projecting from
the ^#alls of vases in Mesopotamia and Egypt, are said
to have been brazed on. Parts of the vessel might
rece/lve special treatment. The rim might be strengthened
by hammering over it on either side a ribbon of metal.
A£ ring foot can be easily made by inverting the vessel
find hammering in a circular depression on the base so
as to leave a fold all round, a process termed cupping
the base. The handle is normally a piece of ribbon or
stout wire with the ends hammered flat to receive the
rivets. Metal vessels of varied shape are quite common
from the beginnings of the historical period in Sumer
and Egypt, at Troy II, in Copper Age graves north of
the Caucasus, and in Middle and Late Minoan Crete.
North of the Alps none are known before the Late
Bronze Age with the exception of two gold cups from
Cornwall.
The predynastic Egyptians were very skilled in
grinding vases out of even the hardest stones, and stone
vessels were also freely used in early Sumer, in Crete
from Early Minoan times and in the Cyclades. This
material was not adopted for the manufacture of vessels
north of the Alps save in Britain. And the small group
of English cups of shale or amber, belonging mainly to
the Middle Bronze Age, bear no obvious relation to any
East Mediterranean form, being equipped with handles
and turned on a lathe. Their prototypes are to be sought
in woodwork.
Bronze Age pottery exhibits such a variety of forms
and ornaments that it must be described in connection
with the several cultural groups which it serves to define.
Technically, it does not differ in any essential principle
TYPOLOGY
137
from Stone Age wares save in the Ancient East and the
Aegean. There the application of the wheel, already
described, gave the potter opportunities for all sorts of
experiments. In the Aegean too a glaze paint, that is, a
paint containing silicates that fuse and vitrify during
the firing of the vase, had been invented in Early Minoan
Crete and diffused thence to the Early Cycladic and
Helladic folk. It enabled the potter to produce lustrous
patterns without burnishing the whole surface. Apart
from these inventions and even north of the Alpsy
Bronze Age pottery exhibits some features, notably
handles and spouts, apparently unknown or at least
very rare in pure Neolithic times.
Fig. 19. Irish gold lunula.
CHAPTER IV
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
Mi E Bronze Age peoples of Europe were essentially
JL descendants of the stocks inhabiting the same or
adjacent parts of our continent in Neolithic times.
These were already racially very mixed, and the rise of
metallurgy may well have involved the incorporation
of foreign artificers and miners in the community, as
indicated in Chapter i. Commercial activity, such as
necessarily played a prominent part in Bronze Age
economics, was also accompanied by a certain inter-
change of populations, not to be confused with mass
migrations. At the same time the dry climatic conditions
prevailing facilitated, and in some cases perhaps even
necessitated, migratory movements. We thus are faced,
even before the beginning of the Bronze Age, with
groups already differentiated that by no means lost
their identity when they adopted metallurgy. On the
contrary, behind the close similarities of bronze tools
and weapons that mark the earliest Bronze Age we
discern already great divergences in pottery, burial rites
and other traits. These divergences soon infect the
bronze industry itself. The latter is again differentiated
according as Egyptian or Anatolian traditions pre-
dominated among the local artificers.
In a general way it seems likely that metal first won
general acceptance among the settled farming popula-
tions of the coasts and valleys. On the plateaux and
plains where forests were giving way to heath and
park-land flora, more mobile tribes mainly, though by
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 139
no means exclusively, pastoral, continued for a while to
content themselves^ with stone tools. Excluding the
Aegean and Sicily, there are only three really important
centres of Early Bronze Age culture in Europe, namely,
Central Europe, South-eastern Spain and Britain,
though Upper Italy may be added as a fourth group and
the Rhone valley and Brittany were destined soon to
join with the other regions.
CENTRAL EUROPE
In the valleys of the Tisza, the Middle and Upper
Danube, the March, the Oder, the Upper Elbe and the
Saale we find a series of allied communities. They are
settled upon the great trade routes connecting the
Adriatic with the amber of Jutland and East Prussia,
and Bohemia with Slovakian copper and Transylvanian
gold. It is convenient to designate all these kindred
groups the Aunjetitz cultures, after a great cemetery
at Unfitice, south of Prague. There are, however,
important differences between the several groups in
pottery and to some extent also in ornaments. Strictly
speaking the Aunjetitz culture is confined to Bohemia,
Moravia, Lower Austria north of the Danube, Silesia
and Saxo-Thuringia. On the fringe of this area there
are local groups named respectively after Gdta on the
Austro-Hungarian frontier, T6szeg near Szolnok on
the Upper Tisza, Perjdmos near Arad on the Maros and
Straubing on the Upper Danube in Lower Bavaria (40.
All equally belong to descendants of the local Copper
Age populations, essentially Danubian II (Lengyel)
folk mixed in varying proportions with intruders from
farther north, Anatolians and Bell-beaker folk from
Spain. The latter had profoundly affected the industry
of the region, without, however, leaving any appreciable
140 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
trace on the physical character of the population. The
metallurgy of our region is none the less on the whole
inspired primarily by the Anatolian school as a con-
sideration of the pins and ear-rings at once betrays.
From Danubian II times onwards there had been indica-
tions of Anatolian penetration in the pottery, Mediter-
ranean shells and stray metal objects found in graves
throughout the Danubian area; prospectors, perhaps
from Troy, had discovered the gold of Transylvania
and the tin of Bohemia. In the advanced Copper Age
some ceramic groups exhibit such marked Anatolian
features that one suspects a considerable influx of
Orientals. Such would presumably have been extracting
gold, copper and tin for export down the Danube to
Troy where rich bronze occurs in the second city. But
when Troy II was sacked, the market would be closed.
The strangers must produce for local consumption. The
rise of the native Aunjetitz industry dated from that
moment.
The Aunjetitz people were of moderate stature but
long-headed: they were not therefore descended from
the exclusively round-headed Beaker folk. They lived
primarily by farming, but undoubtedly controlled the
exploitation of ore and the trade in amber and metals.
Their dwellings were for the most part round beehive
pits dug in the loss, but rectangular houses with
plastered wattle walls were also built. The villages were
of modest size judging from the cemeteries which
comprise no more than a hundred graves. The dead
were always interred in the contracted position with the
knees drawn up to the breast. In one case in Bohemia
a megalithic kist formed the tomb.
Stone and bone tools including celts (some of flint
with rectangular cross-section as in the northern Neo-
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 14!
lithic province), hammer-axes, grooved hammer-stones
(p. 6), crescent-shaped flint sickles, bone awls and
chisels, horn picks and axes, are quite common in the
settlements. From hoards and graves we know flat and
flanged celts (both axes and chisels) and quadrangular
awls of bronze. The principal weapon was the flat
triangular dagger with wooden or bronze hilt, but two
bronze battle-axes with knobbed butts have been found
in Bohemian graves.
The pins all belong to the group with loop heads, and
in particular those with simple roll, knot, perforated
globular, racket, disk or husk heads. Distinctive of the
Aunjetitz culture in the narrower sense is the pin with
a cast loop surmounting an inverted conical head. In
all cases the shaft is generally bent near the point.
Except for the "manchette" armlet with engraved or
ribbed surface, restricted to Bohemia and the immediately
adjoining territories, the bracelets are less typical. On
the other hand, the ingot torque (Fig. 15, no. 7) is
found throughout the area, as are the spiral lock-rings of
gold or bronze like Fig, 1 5, no. 1 4 and the cognate form of
Fig. 1 5, no. 1 3. Amber necklaces of two or more strings
of beads connected by spacers are common only in
Bohemia, Saxo-Thuringia and Bavaria. In Moravia and
Lower Austria amber occurs sporadically, while none is
reported from Hungarian graves. Tubes of rolled
bronze leaf and fossil Dentalium shells, together with
imported Cardium shells or bronze imitations thereof,
were likewise strung together for necklaces. Little
bone disks decorated with concentric circles may have
had a similar use. Girdles of stuflf or of multiple bronze
chains were worn, and scutiform or circular plates
might be sewn on to the former.
The pottery of the whole group is very fine, well
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
baked and burnished, but rarely decorated. It varies in
colour from orange to black and is often mottled like
Anatolian wares. The leading form is a mug or jug
with a loop handle attached some way below the rim.
In the narrower Aunjetitz L area it is at first pouch-shaped,
having a rather peiar-sliaped body, a slightly conical neck
and an everted rim (Fig. 20, no. i). The body and neck
were moulded separately and then joined, a procedure
which leaves a groove round the shoulder. Later the
body is suppressed altogether, and we get the classical
keeled mug with cavetto neck (Fig. 20, no. 3), In both
varieties there is a dimple in the base. The earlier pouch-
shaped type alone is found in Bavaria and Lower Austria
and recurs with rather longer and narrower neck and a
trumpet mouth in the Hungarian T6szeg group. At Per-
jdmos and Gata the distinctive type is an hour-glass mug
with two handles descending from the brim to the belly —
an essentially Anatolian type, that began to appear even in
Danubian II. An amphora is also found in Bohemia, but
there the handles are attached to the neck below the rim.
Together with the mug goes a wide dish with a groove
under the broad brim (Fig. 20, no. 2). There are also
a few bowls on hollow pedestals and many large jars or
pithoi intentionally roughened on the outside. Bohemia
and Moravia have also yielded a number of small vases
that obviously imitate stone models, imported presum-
ably from the Aegean. Finally from Nienhagen on the
northern slopes or the Harz comes a famous clay copy of
a Minoan metal cup of the so-called Vapheio shape (12).
Incised ornament when present is limited to a belt of
parallel lines round the rim or shoulder with fillets
hanging from it. In Hungary the incised lines are
replaced by applied ribs arranged in the same way.
Small nipples on the shoulders are found everywhere.
rt
ti
144 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
The art of the Aunjetitz group is better illustrated by
the engraved patterns on daggers, armlets and pin-
heads. It is purely rectilinear, the favourite motive
being a small hatched triangle. On round surfaces
these may be arranged in concentric rings. The cross
is also found on some disk-head pins. This rigidly
rectilinear style is universal throughout the Early Bronze
Age save for the Spanish and Scottish stone carvings to
be mentioned below. It is sometimes regarded as West
European but might equally well be northern, since
similar triangle patterns had been very common on the
Corded Ware vases of Thuringia in the later Stone Age.
In Saxo-Thuringia side by side with regular Aunjetitz
graves distinguished by no superficial monument,
we encounter interments under barrows, often very
richly furnished. The most famous are the barrows of
Leubingen and Helmsdorf. Both contained halberds
in addition to the normal Aunjetitz armoury. Such
barrows probably belong to descendants of the Neo-
lithic Corded Ware folk of Thuringia. The halberds and
a celt of English manufacture from Helmsdorf show that
these warriors controlled trade routes leading westward
as well as the great amber route along the Elbe. The
special culture that was differentiated under these
circumstances in the Saale valley may well be no earlier
than Reinecke's phase B while the Aunjetitz culture
proper occupies both phases A and B.
North of Magdeburg and Glogau no burials fur-
nished with Early Bronze Age types are known. But
at least in Scandinavia and along the North Sea coasts
the old Nordic population still lived on in a Stone Age
burying their dead either in megalithic long kists or
under barrows. In a few such graves gold spirals of
Aunjetitz types (like Fig, 15, no, 14) or other stray
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 145
imports have been unearthed to confirm the synchronism
of this belated Stone Age with a precocious Bronze
culture. Similarly south of the Drave the so-called
Slavonian culture seems to lack metal. Yet the pottery
includes keeled mugs quite like those of Aunjetitz and
T6szeg. Moreover one group of Middle Bronze Ag£
pottery from Hungary is a direct continuation of the
Slavonian tradition.
UPPER ITALY
A contemporary centre of metallurgical industry in
Northern Italy must be inferred from the distribution of
certain types such as the flanged celts like Fig. 4, no. I.
It is not, however, easy to locate the centre accurately.
In the province of Brescia extensive cemeteries, notably
the type site of Remedello, have been explored that go
back to the Copper Age, in fact to the Bell-beaker
period. Beside the narrow-shouldered West European
dagger and others of Early Minoan form with midrib
and short tang and flint copies of both, the graves
contained round-heeled triangular daggers and even
flanged celts, albeit of pure copper (44).
Within the period covered by the cemeteries pile-
dwellings were being founded on the Italian Lakes.
These were occupied for a long time and have yielded
stone tools as well as Middle and even Late Bronze Age
types. But there are indications that some Early Bronze
Age forms were actually cast in the lake-villages,
and amber beads attest their relations with the North.
It is supposed that the lake-dwellers were invaders from
beyond the Alps though their precise home is uncertain.
Some of the pots really resemble early Aunjetitz shapes,
but they exhibit a curious spur or thumb-grip at the
top of the handle that is more at home south of the Alps.
10
146 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
The Early Bronze Age culture of Italy is, therefore,
still rather vague. Industrially Aegean and Spanish
traditions met there — even the halberd is represented
in hoards. Ethnically an old native Neolithic stock was
overlaid by Bell-beaker elements from Spain and
immigrants from beyond the Alps.
SPAIN
As a centre of Early Bronze Age industry South-
eastern Spain ranks in importance with Bohemia and
even perhaps the Aegean. Here, too, it looks as if the
rise of a local Bronze Age coincided with an interruption
of relations with the Eastern Mediterranean, which
obliged foreign metallurgists, settled round the rich
lodes of copper and silver, to produce for a local market.
The effects of earlier eastern trade are illustrated by the
Copper Age settlements and cemeteries of Los Millares
in Almeria and of Palmella in Portugal. At Los Millares
the dead were buried in beehive tombs built of stones
and roofed by corbelling. Similar, but sometimes even
finer, tombs are known from Granada, Andalucia and
Southern Portugal. The tombs at Palmella are similarly
shaped, but hewn out of the rock. Both types seem to
be derived from the Eastern Mediterranean. That is
confirmed by the discovery at Los Millares of ostrich-
shell beads, pins of hippopotamus-ivory, vases of stone
and plaster, painted pottery and bone combs, as well as
flat celts, West European daggers, saws, arrow-heads
and other copper implements. With the Oriental im-
ports are found also Baltic amber, English jet and French
callais. The pottery in all the above-mentioned tombs
includes Beaker ware mingled with undecorated local
vases sometimes of Early Minoan or Cycladic form.
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 147
Siret(<0) believes that these rich tombs belonged to
Oriental colonists who had founded trading-posts at
points commanding the sea route to the North and the
local supplies of ore. He insists that the rarity of gold
and silver at this time is due to the fact that the precious
metals were exported to the Ancient East and the
Aegean, just as in Denmark, when in Late Neolithic
times the amber trade with Bohemia was established,
that substance, formerly common in every tomb, ceased
to figure in the grave inventory. In the Bronze Age
culture that succeeded that of Los Millares silver became
relatively common and foreign imports correspondingly
rare, as might be inferred on the assumption of the
interruption of eastern trade.
The chief centre of Early Bronze Age civilization lay
in Almeria, the type station being El Argar in that pro-
vince (45) . The same culture spread all along the east coast
of the Peninsula to the Pyrenees and is traceable, though
in an impoverished form, in Andalucia and Southern
Portugal.
Physically the Bronze Age population of South-
eastern Spain was mixed. Among the males long-heads
and round-heads were represented in approximately
equal proportions; the women on the other hand were
predominantly brachycephalic.
The El Argar folk were certainly farmers and as
surely also metallurgists. Moulds, grooved hammer-
stones and slag have turned up in several settlements.
The people doubtless exploited the local copper and
silver ores, but the supply of tin which had to be
imported from Galicia, the Cevennes, Brittany or Corn-
wall was irregular. None of the tools analysed contained
as much as ten per cent., and the majority consist of
unalloyed copper. In Almeria the El Argar people
10-2
148 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
lived on hill-tops defended by great stone walls, some-
times pierced by a postern reminiscent of Mycenae. The
houses were agglomerations of rectangular chambers
with stone foundations for the walls. Some may have
boasted two storeys. The dead were buried, contracted,
within the settlements, among or under the houses,
either in small kists of six thin slabs or in large jars.
Some sarcophagi, hollowed out of stone, are also assigned
to this period. Against a wall in one village was an
altar-like construction embellished with horn-like ends
suggesting a well-known Minoan cult object, the horns
of consecration.
The principal tools are celts, flat or with low flanges,
and quadrangular awls. As weapons were employed
round-heeled knife-daggers, halberds and the bow and
arrows. The daggers, as in the Cyclades, were not
seldom attached to the hilts by small silver rivets. As
noted, the daggers eventually grew into short flat swords.
The halberd, the most distinctive weapon of the penin-
sula, is already foreshadowed by flint blades from Los
Millares and contemporary sites. The bronze specimens
vary widely in shape : most are symmetrical, some have
very broad butts, the rivets may be quite big and a
broad midrib is frequently used to strengthen the blade.
The arrows were tipped with tanged copper heads,
generally lozenge-shaped and seldom barbed. The type
goes back to the Copper Age culture of Los Millares.
Narrow plaques of schist, perforated at either end, were
probably worn on the wrist by archers as a protection
against the recoil of the bow-string. Elsewhere such
wrist-guards are found in graves with Bell-beakers.
The ornaments are dull in comparison with the
Bohemian. The most interesting is a diadem, an open
circlet of silver or sheet copper, shaped so as to leave
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 149
an upright projection in front. Plain rings of silver or,
bronze wire were worn on the arms and fingers and in
the ears. Another ornament for the arm or neck was
made from a boar's tusk perforated with a series of
holes through which small copper rings were stuck.
Beads of rolled copper leaf or coiled wire together with
shells were hung on necklaces. There are also a few
imported beads of callais, segmented beads of Minoan
or Egyptian faience and imitations thereof in bone.
Pyramidal bone buttons with V perforation served to
fasten the garments.
The El Argar pottery, like that of Aunjetitz, is
normally unornamented and red, black or mottled.
Handles are virtually unknown, nor is the base ever
dimpled; rounded bottoms are indeed common. The
main forms are goblets with inverted rims on a solid
pedestal (Fig. 20, no, 5), dishes with similar rims, big
carinated bowls with flattened conical necks (Fig. 20,
no. 4), and keeled mugs with cavetto necks (Fig. 20,
no. 6). The latter closely resemble the Aunjetitz form
in profile, but never have handles. Such parallels need
imply no direct connection ; they are rather developments
of Copper Age types in which North African and Aegean
elements were prominent, and some of which reached
Central Europe along with the Bell-beaker culture.
In the East Spanish cradle of the El Argar culture,
so rich in artistic production of the Stone and Copper
Ages, no indications of decorative activity assignable
to the Bronze Age have come to light. But in the North-
west (Northern Portugal, Galicia and the Pyrenees),
where isolated bronzes of El Argar form and traces of
contemporary mining have come to light, two curious
series of rock-carvings exist that may be described here.
The first and older group is a degenerate descendant
150 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
of the well-known Copper Age group described by
Burkitt (d)p. 217). Its patterns seem to represent yet
more conventionalized versions of the human figure.
The body has become a rectangle or three concentric
circles round a central dot. The head is denoted by a
vertical line starting from the periphery and sometimes
terminating in a circle or a cross. A pair of short
oblique strokes, sprouting from the upper corners of
the rectangles or the appropriate cords of the circles
may be added to represent arms, and legs may be
similarly indicated (Fig. 21, no. i). Some of these
figures may stand for the four-wheeled carts depicted
on the Copper Age monuments.
In a later group conventionalization had proceeded
even farther. Of the old figures nothing now remains
but circles sometimes traversed by a radial line and
enclosing a round hollow, termed a cup mark (Fig. 21,
no, i), or a group of such. But mixed up with these
geometric figures on some rocks are highly conven-
tionalized but quite recognizable animals, carved in the
same technique. Apart from these animal figures the
later Galician rock-carvings offer most interesting
parallels to the "cup and ring" markings of the British
Isles. They thus supplement the evidence afforded by
beads and tools for the continuance of those ancient trade
relations along the Atlantic coasts of which the distribu-
tion of megalithic tombs give proof in the Stone Age.
Settlements and cemeteries of classical El Argar type
are common only along the east coast of the peninsula
from the Ebro to Gibraltar, In Portugal El Argar
types occur principally in the late degenerate forms of
the local megalithic tombs. The same remark applies
to the Pyrenaean region where a local megalithic
culture, evolved in the Copper Age out of a fusion of
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 151
Portuguese, Bell-beaker and local Neolithic elements,
now accepted some El Argar types of tool and pottery.
In time the range of the El Argar culture may be
considerable. It must begin quite early in the second
millennium B.C., yet, at least in its homeland, it has
no successor till the Iron Age.
Apart from the limited adoption of El Argar types
in the south, it seems that the natives of France were
incapable of fulfilling the conditions requisite for regular
supplies of metal. Though isolated bronzes of early
type are widespread, burials furnished with such are
confined to the north-west corner and the extreme east
(Savoy and Jura). The negative evidence is supplemented
by the discovery of a few Bronze Age trinkets among
Neolithic or Copper Age grave goods in the stone kists
of the Cevennes or the allees convenes of the Seine-Oise-
Marne basins.
In Normandy and Brittany on the other hand a
series of tombs furnished with Early Bronze Age types
testifies to a vigorous though belated metal industry.
The Armorican culture probably belongs rather to the
Middle Bronze Age, like that of the Rhone, and so
does not rank as an original centre of metallurgy, but it
is none the less more convenient to mention it here at
the expense of chronological exactitude. The Bronze
Age graves lie conspicuously outside the areas where
the famous megalithic tombs are concentrated. They
seem to denote a new and probably intrusive culture.
The tombs are generally chambers, built of small stones
not bonded with any mortar and roofed either with a
single large capstone or with a corbelled vault. The whole
structure was buried beneath a mound or cairn. Usually
no passage connected the chamber with the exterior of
the cairn, but some tombs with a corridor of access in
152 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
Normandy may belong to this period. The tombs were
designed for one interment only, and in most cases the
body had been burned, though inhumations occur (51).
The furniture includes flat celts and round-heeled
daggers1 of bronze and superb tanged and barbed
arrow-heads of flint. One wooden dagger-hilt had been
studded with 1333 little gold nails; other daggers are
bronze hiked. Wrist-guards for the bowman have been
found but rarely. Among the ornaments may be men-
tioned a ring-head pin of silver and rare beads of amber
or vitreous paste.
A curious vase regularly accompanies these burials.
It is strictly biconical though the upper cone is shorter
and more depressed than the lower one. Two or four
wide strap handles unite the rim to the keel where the
two cones join. The vases may be decorated with herring-
bone incisions or with rows of hatched triangles along
the keel and base and the same inverted below the keel
and along the rim. This is the same style of decoration
that we find generally on bronzes and gold ornaments
throughout the Early Bronze Age, The origin of this
culture is at the moment unknown.
The Early Bronze Age cultures in Savoy and Eastern
France are chiefly represented by burials under barrows
which may still contain stone axes (celts) together with
bronze offerings. They are inspired partly from Bohemia
and Hungary like the Rhone culture of the Middle
Bronze Age,
At the close of the Neolithic Age the dominant folk
on both sides of the Rhine possessed the culture termed
1 D£chelette figures as halberds certain blades from S. Fiacre,
Morbihan. An examination of the weapons, now in Oxford, disclosed
not the straight transverse lines left by a halberd shaft, but the semi-
circular plate usually left by dagger hilts.
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 153
by Burkitt " Pile-dwelling ". They dwelt in fortified
settlements. At the same time part of the country was
overrun by Corded Ware makers from farther east and
the Bell-beaker folk from the West. Mixed communi-
ties arose under these conditions. From an amalgamation
between the two intrusive groups sprang the so-called
Zoned-beaker group. This people already possessed
round-heeled daggers of true Bronze Age type. A
large proportion of them went down stream and settled
in Britain, as we shall see below.
In the Rhineland itself, however, a kindred group,
including more Pile-dwelling elements, remained behind
and created the Adlerberg culture, so called after a
village and cemetery on a knoll of that name on the
outskirts of Worms, The huts were pit-dwellings, partly
sunk in the earth, and the graves, situated among the
huts, each contained a contracted corpse. Round-heads
were predominant in the population. The grave goods
are poor and primitive — rare flat celts, round-heeled
flat daggers and quadrangular awls of bronze, and pins
with broad rolled heads and a shaft bent like a sabre.
The latter type was also imitated in bone. The graves
also yielded flint knives and arrow-heads, bone and
allegedly ivory rings, and beads and shells, including
Mediterranean species, pierced for stringing.
The commonest pot is a rather biconical or pear-
shaped mug with ribbon handles, that may be decorated
with rows of incised triangles like the Armorican vases.
GREAT BRITAIN
The round-headed Beaker folk who descended the
Rhine settled in Great Britain, introducing there their
own habit of individual burial under a round barrow in
contrast to the collective interments under a long barrow
154 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
practised by the supposedly older " Neolithic " long-
heads. Naturally the invaders from the East did not
exterminate the older population. The latter continued
to bury their dead for a time in the family vaults under
long barrows, and, though the round barrow eventually
became universal, probably ended by absorbing the
intruders. They at any rate played a part in the develop-
ment of the bronze industry. Yet the oldest metal
objects in Britain have been found under round barrows
and with beakers. Though flint and stone are far
commoner than metal with such pottery, the Beaker
folk probably introduced the knowledge of metallurgy
or the organizing ability needed to make that knowledge
effective ; the establishment of the necessary organization
naturally took time for invaders in a strange country.
Our knowledge of the British Bronze Age being
founded in a peculiar degree upon a study of the funerary
pottery and associated grave goods, our account of it
must begin with a description of the main types. The
beakers (i ) that symbolize the invaders have been divided
into three main classes by Thurnam and Abercromby,
denoted by the letters A, B, and C — most unhappily
since, while the A and C beakers are closely allied, the
B beakers are placed in a class apart by ornament and
associations as well as by form.
Beakers of class B stand nearest to the continental
varieties. The rims are everted and the profile forms a
graceful 3 curve down to the base. The clay is fine,
often red and generally burnished. The ornament
is arranged in predominantly horizontal zones, as a
rule alternately plain and decorated. The patterns,
repeated round the zones, are quite simple — chevrons,
triangles, X's. The decoration was executed either
with a cog-wheel or short-toothed comb of bone or
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 155
wood whose square teeth, rolled over the wet clay,
have left an almost continuous series of little rect-
angular depressions, or (in North Britain) with a cord
impressed upon the damp clay or finally with a simple
pointed implement. Beakers of this type are found
all over the island. They are regularly associated with
bronze, or perhaps copper, daggers of West European
type (Fig. 7, no. 2), barbed and tanged flint arrow-heads,
stone wrist-guards and buttons with V -perforation, but
never with objects of Nordic type (stone battle-axes
or flint daggers).
Beakers of types A and C bear a close family likeness.
The neck is practically straight or even inturned at the
rim and makes a definite angle with the globular body
instead of rising out of it in a continuous swelling curve.
In type A the neck is relatively long in comparison
with the body while in C it is shorter. These beakers
exhibit a greater variety of ornament than those of
class B. The arrangement is no longer exclusively
horizontal ; a division into panels or metopes is common,
and occasionally vertical bands predominate. The
patterns include saltires, elongated triangles and lozen-
ges. Cord-impression is not employed, but in addition
to the remaining devices applied to the decoration of
B beakers, we have the imprint of finger-nails and of a
hollow reed or bird's leg-bone. In type C horizontal
ridges in relief may be used decoratively. In the same
class are to be included a small group of beakers with
handles. Such appendages are foreign to the pure
bell-beakers of Western Europe, but are not rare in
Bavaria and farther east. With beakers of types A
and C are associated flat round-heeled daggers with
rivets for the handle (Fig. 7, no. 3), flint daggers, stone
battle-axes and flint arrow-heads.
156 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
Lord Abercromby<53> believed that the Beaker folk
landed at one point on our coasts, probably in Kent,
and spread gradually northwards. The gradual de-
generation of type A would provide a time-scale for
checking their advance. The theory of a single landing-
place is now generally rejected, and class B beakers
must be excluded from the typological series as a group
apart. On the other hand, the C beakers, that may well
be decadent descendants of the A group, are really
commonest in North Britain, So the people who made
them may in truth have spread northwards by land
routes rather as Abercromby imagined.
Partly, at least, contemporary with the beaker burials
are others, accompanied by a quite unrelated vase
termed a food vessel. This was the funerary pot of the
Neolithic" stock and originated in North Britain or
Ireland out of a bowl found in the long barrows and
contemporary settlements. The allegedly Neolithic
bowls were round-bottomed so that food vessels showing
this peculiarity may be regarded as early. Such are
lotus-shaped with ornament even on the base; they
are termed type A by Abercromby. Very soon the
base was flattened and a groove developed round the
widest part of the body (Frontispiece). As a further
development, or more probably as a derivative of
another variety of "Neolithic" bowl, the part above
the grooves was contracted somewhat to form a slightly
concave neck, the groove being now in a well-marked
shoulder. The classical types of England are a modifica-
tion of this. The lower part is an inverted truncated
cone; above this comes a marked shoulder bearing
one (types I and 2) (Fig. 20, no. 7) or two
(type 4) grooves or none at all (type 3). The shoulder
is surmounted by a short concave neck. In all food
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 157
vessels the rim is broad and moulded, generally on the
inside.
Food vessels, especially in North Britain and Ireland,
are very richly decorated. The cog-wheel technique,
distinctive of Beaker ornament, is indeed comparatively
rare on food vessels south of Derbyshire, while cord
impressions are exceptional farther north. On the other
hand, three methods of ornamentation strange to beakers
were freely employed on food vessels in Ireland and
Western Scotland, but grow progressively rarer as we
proceed southward in England. They are termed by
Abercromby the whipped-cord, the looped-cord and
the false-relief techniques respectively.
In the first a cord, twisted tightly round a pin or
other thin core, is impressed upon the damp clay, a
style of decoration known also on "Neolithic" pottery
in Scotland. The looped-cord effect may be obtained by
twisting two cords together to form a braid which is
impressed upon the clay, then unwinding the braid and
forming a new one with the cords twisted in the opposite
direction. The false relief is obtained by impressing on
the soft clay a bone or wooden implement with a
triangular point like that of a penknife so as to produce a
series of triangles whose bases form a continuous line.
The process is repeated with the point of the instrument
inverted so as to yield a second series of triangles whose
bases shall be parallel to those of the first but whose
apices point to the junction of the bases of the first
series. A zig-zag band is thus left in relief between the
two sets of inverted triangles (Frontispiece). Sometimes
an actual triangular stamp of wood may have been
employed. And in any case the effect is similar to that of
the fretwork technique on Central European pottery
described in the next chapter. It is already seen on
158 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
some true bell-beakers from North Spain and Central
Europe.
Though covered with patterns, food vessels seldom
exhibit such distinctive "motives as are seen on beakers
of class A. We may, however, draw attention to the
radial cruciform or stellate patterns on the bases of
some Irish and Scottish examples. They distinctly
recall the patterns radiating from the bases of vases
of the bell-beaker class in Spain and Portugal
(Frontispiece).
The food vessels of early type are found principally
in Ireland and the more mountainous northern and
western portions of Great Britain. In Southern England
funerary vases of this group are quite rare, and all belong
to late or degenerate types. Food vessels, in fact,
doubtless belong to the "Neolithic" stock, dispossessed
in the south by the Beaker folk. Nevertheless fresh
arrivals from the south-west, whence the " Neolithic M
people had presumably come, are highly probable. A
reinforcement of Spanish influence is demonstrated by
the radial decoration mentioned above as well as by the
contemporary halberds, the chambered tumuli of the
type of New Grange, the carvings on stones there and
elsewhere and other cognate phenomena.
With food vessels are associated flat triangular
daggers, celts and awls of bronze, flint arrow-heads and
stone battle-axes, but no wrist-guards or flint daggers
and very few buttons with V -perforation. The skulls of
corpses interred with food vessels, like those from the
" Neolithic " long barrows, are quite often long-headed
in contrast to the pronounced round-headedness of the
Beaker folk. Moreover, in some instances food vessels
accompany cremated interments and may even contain
the ashes.
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 159
To adapt them better to the function of ossuaries,
the food vessels were eventually greatly enlarged,
becoming what are termed cinerary urns. The general
adoption of cremation, signalized by the appearance of
the cinerary urn, may be conveniently taken to mark the
beginning of the Middle Bronze Age here, although no
corresponding changes in the buried bronze offerings
can be detected. And it must be noted that even beakers
were in use side by side with early cineraries.
Sharply defined cultural groups are not distinguish-
able in Great Britain till the Late Bronze Age, but even
in our period we can discern the working of a principle,
recently enunciated by Dr Fox (71). In the predominantly
lowland area south-east of a line from Teesmouth to
Torquay foreign cultures of continental origin tend to
be imposed; in the highland country to the north-west
such tend to be absorbed. In our period the Beaker
culture maintained itself for a long time in the south;
in the north the native Bronze culture characterized by
food vessels soon developed and superseded it. Two
overlapping phases of the British Early Bronze Age are
thus obvious; the first, marked by the earlier types of
beakers, witnessed the arrival and expansion of the
round-headed invaders; during the second the older
population, distinguished by the food vessels, reasserted
itself. Thanks to the blending of two traditions the
native civilization of the British Isles during these two
periods was vigorous and original.
While they undoubtedly cultivated grains and en-
gaged in trade and industry, our Bronze Age ancestors
were semi-nomadic. As Dr Curwen(8o) puts it "like the
patriarch Isaac who 'sowed in that land and found in
the same year an hundredfold... and departed thence '
our Bronze Age ancestors inhabited a site from one
l6o THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
to five years until the cornplots were exhausted and
then moved elsewhere". No large villages have been
found, and the earlier burials do not constitute regular
cemeteries. A few fortified enclosures on hill-tops were
certainly occupied by the Beaker folk, but their founda-
tion dates from an earlier age. The defences, of which
Windmill Hill near. Avebury offers the typical example,
consisted of concentric moats interrupted by frequent
causeways (108).
The dwellings of the period were mainly circular.
In England the hut was excavated in the chalky ground
and completed probably by a conical roof of skins. In
Scotland beaker sherds have been found in " hut-
circles " of which the foundation only — a circular bank
of stones and turf — survives ; the nature of the super-
structure is unknown. In one near Muirkirk in Ayr-
shire (79) a post hole was observed near the centre as well
as a large hole full of ashes and cracked stones that
served as a cooking-pit. Such hut-circles are scattered
all over the moors throughout the British Isles and are
easily seen when the heather is not too high. In all a
gap in the circular bank, often flanked by great stones,
marks the doorway. In some later huts (Late Bronze
Age) on Dartmoor (78) the megalithic jambs and the
stone lintel above them are still in position. These show
that by the Late Bronze Age at least the hut with low
narrow doorway (2 feet 9 inches wide by 3 feet 9 inches
high) was already well established. Sometimes the door
opens on to a low narrow passage, often bent in an
elbow. A comparison with the snow huts of the
Esquimaux suggests that these features were designed
to exclude currents of cold air. The superstition about
draughts that makes railway travelling so painful even
now is clearly very old. The inhabitants of hut-circles
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE l6l
seem to have enjoyed the odorous warmth of human
bodies clustered about a reeking fire as much as their
Arctic representatives. The stone hut-circle, with its
analogues in the beehive tomb, is an Atlantic-Mediter-
ranean device inherited from the old "Neolithic" stock
in Britain, but it continued to grow into even more
elaborate forms during the Iron Age.
Hut-circles generally occur in little groups, evidently
tiny hamlets of from four to twelve families. Adjacent
to some groups, for instance on Dartmoor and on
Spartleton Edge in the Lammermoors, remains of
irregular enclosures, fenced by dry walls of stone, are
noticeable. They may denote the cornplots of the semi-
nomadic villagers (80).
Nearly all Early Bronze Age burials have been
marked externally by a mound of earth or a cairn of
stones. But the barrows and the grave beneath them
vary considerably in structure. The simplest form of
barrow is a roughly circular mound; from their external
appearance such tumuli are termed "bowl barrows".
The base of the mound is sometimes surrounded with a
ring of large stones, technically called a peristalith, that
served to keep the material of the tumulus in place.
Occasionally such a ring of stones or a circular trench
dug in the virgin soil encircles the grave but is completely
buried by the mass of the barrow. Very close attention
is therefore needed during the excavation of even a
simple bowl barrow to disclose these and other possible
structural features. A more elaborate monument is the
so-called ' * bell barrow ". Here the mound is surrounded
by a ditch or fosse with a bank outside it; a narrow belt
of level ground, known as the berm, generally intervenes
between the inner lip of the encircling fosse and the
base of the mound proper. Some gigantic tumuli,
CBA • II
l62 THE EARLY'BRONZE AGE
covering built chambers, such as the celebrated Maes
Howe in Orkney, could be classed as bell barrows though
some believe them to be Neolithic rather than Bronze
Age. In a third type, christened the "disk barrow ", the
central eminence has virtually disappeared; we have,
that is, an immense berm encircled by fosse and rampart.
Such are supposed to be late in the Early Bronze Age;
disks are generally earlier (72).
The normal grave of the Beaker people was a simple
trench or, in hard country, a short kist built of six stone
slabs at the centre of the barrow. In Ireland and
Northern and Western Scotland some round cairns
which covered circular or more often cruciform cham-
bers, roofed by corbelling, are still assigned to the
Bronze Age. Such chambered cairns are clearly con-
nected with the old long barrows that covered similar
chambers. And it must be remembered that Early
Bronze Age pottery, principally Beaker ware, has been
found in quite a number of long barrows, showing that
such family vaults were still in use when the Beaker folk
reached our shores.
"The standing stones on the naked wine red moor"
are a feature of British highland scenery scarcely less
impressive than the grandeur of their setting. Mr
Burkittco has already described the principal characters
of menhirs^ alignments and cromlechs as well as Stone-
henge(7s), but a few additional words on the stone
circles are indispensable to any account of the Bronze
Age in Great Britain. It has been suggested that the
stone circle developed out of the peristalith of a cairn or
from the buried setting under one (73). At Clava near
Inverness we actually find circles of huge upright stones
enclosing the chambered cairns, and at Callernish in
Lewis a similar ring of uprights encloses a chambered
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 163
tumulus but just touches its periphery. Our stone
circles vary widely in character and doubtless also in
date and function. All consist of upright stones placed
so as to form a ring, but the number, size- and arrange-
ment of the stones are variable. There are circles whose
stones barely emerge above the surface of the ground
and others like Avebury (Wilts), consisting of stupen-
dous blocks of stone. Some large circles are surrounded
by a fosse and bank like the Rings of Brodgar (no bank)
and Stennis in Orkney, Arbor Low in Derbyshire and
of course Stonehenge itself and Avebury. The diameter
between the stones of Brodgar is 340 feet. A much
smaller example of a similar type (without bank) is to
be seen at the Broomend of Crichie near Inverurie with
a diameter of only 38 feet. Its six pillars surround a
central burial kist. In a specialized group, confined to
Aberdeenshire, the uprights increase in height progres-
sively throughout a semicircle, and a huge horizontal
slab, termed the recumbent, lies between the two highest
which are of course adjacent. Some circles at least were
sepulchral. For example, a kist containing a food
vessel was found so precisely in the centre of a circle on
Mauchrum Moor on the west coast of Arran that grave
and circle must have been conceived as a single monu-
ment. The food vessel incidentally fixes the Early
Bronze Age date of this circle at least. But others may be
later in date and need not have been connected with
any burials. Sometimes two circles are closely juxtaposed
as in the famous Grey Wethers on Dartmoor.
Near many stone circles stands a single upright
termed the outlier. Such are attached to all sorts of
circles in all parts of the country, e.g. to the fossed Ring
of Brodgar in Orkney, to most Aberdeenshire circles,
to the small ring termed the Rollright Stones in
1 1-2
164 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
Oxfordshire, etc. Outliers furnish one of the principal
arguments to those who believe the circles to have been
astronomical. The outlier would be a pointer to mark
some celestial event viewed from the centre at a stated
season of the year. Unfortunately in quite a number of
cases the only possible phenomena to which many of
these outliers might have been orientated prove to be
of such an inconspicuous nature that they are unlikely to
have attracted attention in our clouded heavens. Indeed
it is fantastic to imagine that the ill-clad inhabitants of
these boreal isles should shiver night long in rain and
gale, peering through the driving mists to note eclipses
and planetary movements in our oft-veiled skies.
The cover-stones of certain Scottish kists containing
food vessels or beakers exhibit a curious carved decora-
tion, and allied patterns can be seen on the stones of the
peristaliths and chambers of the famous chambered
tumuli at New Grange and Lough Crew in Ireland.
Here Professor Breuil has been able to distinguish four
series (i ). The first, simple engraved lines, and the
second, consisting of spirals and other curvilinear figures
executed by pocking, are anterior to the building of the
tumuli which partly hide the markings. Subsequently
other patterns — lozenges and diapers pocked all over —
were squeezed into the spaces left by the earlier figures.
Designs of the same series, Breuil's group IV, recur
together with spirals, on the underside of the stone
covering a kist containing a beaker at Carnwath in
Lanarkshire (Fig. 21, no. 2), Between these limits fall
a large series of patterns, allied in design and technique
to group II but executed on living rock surfaces in
Southern Scotland and Northern England. The com-
monest device here is the " cup-and-ring marking": a
shallow depression, 1—2 inches in diameter hammered
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
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21
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l66 THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
out in the rock surface, is surrounded by from one to
eight concentric circles, pocked out; a groove often runs
from the centre to just beyond the outermost circle
(cf. Fig. 21, no. i). Cognate curvilinear patterns,
showing very clearly the motive of a pair of human eyes
that is just discernible at New Grange, are carved on a
chalk drum found under an Early Bronze Age barrow
at Folkton in Yorkshire. Probably in all these carvings
we have very conventionalized versions of the human
figure or parts thereof and perhaps of ritual objects such
as bull-roarers. The peculiarity of the group lies in the
use of curvilinear motives that are otherwise foreign to
the Bronze Age art of Europe except at a later date in
Scandinavia and Hungary. The spirals have been inter-
preted as due to Mycenaean influence. In any case the
carvings do indicate very close connections with the
South-west. The spirals of New Grange have parallels,
which cannot be accidental, on the walls of the great
passage grave of Gavr'inis, Brittany. The cup-and-ring
markings exhibit no less significant similarities to the
Galician carvings mentioned on p. 150. These carvings
can hardly be merely decorative. As we have no insight
into their inner function and significance, we mask our
ignorance by calling them religious or magical.
The purely decorative art of our Early Bronze Age
is illustrated on the pottery already discussed and on the
weapons and ornaments. Of the latter the most striking
are the gold lunulae and jet necklaces described in
Chapter in. All show the strictly rectilinear patterns of
triangles and similar motives usual everywhere at the
period, engraved in the case of bronzes and lunulae and
punctured on the jet beads.
The main types of tools and weapons in use have
already been sufficiently summarized in dealing with
THE EARLY BRONZE AGE 167
the grave goods associated with beakers and food vessels.
The only important addition to the list, given by a study
of the few hoards assignable to the period, is the halberd
that was, as noted in Chapter in, very common in
Ireland. It must again be insisted that flint was very
freely used, not only for arrow-heads but also for all
sorts of knives and scrapers, and polished stone celts,
as well as battle-axes, were still current. Yet copper or
bronze flat celts were manufactured locally. Moulds
for casting such have turned up in Scotland to an extent
unsurpassed anywhere on the continent outside South-
eastern Spain, and the distribution of actual specimens
coincides fairly closely with that of Early Bronze Age
settlement as disclosed by Beaker burials. On the other
hand, Dr Foxcsg) contends that the bronze knife-daggers
were imported from the South by sea. They are certainly
concentrated in South-western England and become
disproportionately rarer to the east and north. Com-
mercial or other connections with the Iberian Peninsula
were certainly close during the period. And a dagger
whose wooden hilt was decorated with tiny gold nails
affords a link with contemporary Brittany. At the same
time contact with the lands across the North Sea is
illustrated by the amber necklaces and flint daggers of
Scandinavian type as well as by beads in the form
of a double-axe — a well-known " Neolithic" type in
Denmark.
Thus three currents met in England during the
Early Bronze Age — one from Central Europe repre-
sented by the invading Beaker folk, another from the
Iberian Peninsula, perhaps unconnected with popular
movement, and a third, plainly mercantile, from
Scandinavian countries. That explains the intense vigour
and originality of our Bronze Age civilization.
CHAPTER V
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
H E Middle Bronze Age is much more than a mere
JL continuation of the previous period. It witnessed
the rise of schools of metallurgy in regions where Early
Bronze Age types are rare and among peoples who had
spent the preceding period in a belated Stone Age. The
new communities of metal-workers made an original
contribution to the common European stock of types.
Thus many of the bronzes illustrate a new spirit
instead of being just improvements on the older types.
Conversely, in several centres of early metallurgy,
particularly South-eastern Spain and Great Britain and
to some extent also Central Bohemia, Middle Bronze
Age types are either totally lacking or represented only
by stray objects and a few hoards. The principal new
provinces are Scandinavia, the South-west German up-
lands and Hungary, to which may be added the peculiar
developments in Upper Italy and the Rhone valley. It
will be seen from a glance at the map that these centres
lie along and on either side of the great central amber
route. The regions remote therefrom failed to participate
in the new developments.
SCANDINAVIA
While the earlier Aunjetitz culture had been flourish-
ing in Bohemia, and plentiful metal objects were being
buried with beakers and early food vessels in Great
Britain, the peoples of Scandinavia and North Germany
still used stone tools, supplemented by a very few
bronzes imported from England or Central Europe. To
that epoch should be assigned the latest megalithic
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE 169
kists and the separate graves high up in the barrows
of the Battle-axe folk. The latter had obtained complete
dominance before the secrets of metal-working had been
mastered locally. But smiths were eventually attracted
to Denmark, which became the centre of a new metal-
working province, termed Germanic or Teutonic.
Besides Denmark it embraced the Norwegian coasts,
Southern Sweden, North-west Germany and Central
Germany north of Magdeburg.
The distribution and grouping of the barrows — for
very few settlements are known — produces the impres-
sion of a semi-nomadic people, living in little groups
with a limited regular range. It must be remembered
that the dry sub-boreal conditions had converted the
North European plain into an open park-land, verging
on steppe in some districts. The Bronze Age population
buried their dead, like the Neolithic Battle-axe folk,
under barrows, normally in the extended position and
very often enclosed in coffins formed out of hollowed
oak trunks.
Besides flint tools — sickles, scrapers, knives, and even
celts — flanged celts, palstaves or even socketed celts,
button sickles and knives were manufactured locally in
bronze. In men's graves weapons are abundant. From
such come the splendid swords with inlaid pommels,
great socketed spear-heads sometimes 35 cm. long, and,
more rarely, heavy battle-axes with a shaft-hole. The
arrows were still tipped with flint points, and even
flint daggers remained current, though inferior in
workmanship to the amazing products of the last
Neolithic Period.
Unusually favourable circumstances have preserved
to us substantial vestiges of the actual clothing then
worn. Men wore a close-fitting woollen cap; a sort of
IJO THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
blanket was girt round the body under the arms, while
the shoulders were covered with a plaid fastened by a
brooch at the throat. Women were clad in a short
sleeved jacket, like a pull-over, and a skirt formed by
girding a blanket round the waist. Their long hair was
held in place by a net. Both sexes were shod with
leather boots. The simple woollen dress was set off by a
wealth of gold or bronze ornaments. For fastening the
cloak two-piece fibulae (Fig. 14, no. 16) were used, but
neat studs were also manufactured. The leather girdles
were fastened with the clasps already described on
p. 127 and decked with tutuli. These are circular. Those
worn by women have a central spike while the disk may
attain a diameter of 28 cm. (Fig. 17, no. 2). Men's
were of more modest size with a hollow boss or umbo in
the centre. Males wore bracelets on the left arm only,
females on both. The most distinctive and beautiful
terminate in spirals or pairs of spirals. Finger-rings
and bracelets of double gold wire were favoured by
both sexes. Finally, women wore the broad gorgets, like
Fig. 17, no. i. Necklaces of amber or glass beads
are less common.
Towards the close of the period toilet articles in the
form of tweezers, single-edged razors (Fig. 12, no. 1 1)
and bronze combs begin to appear in the graves.
Pottery is rare and exceedingly rough. Finer vessels
were made of wood. Several neat cups of this material
have survived. They appear to have been turned on a
pole-lathe, are provided with a band handle and some-
times are adorned with little tin nails forming a star
pattern on the base.
The Teutons of the Middle Bronze Age displayed
high artistic capacity. Their aesthetic taste is best
exemplified in the shapely weapons and graceful orna-
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE 171
ments and their decoration. Axes, sword-hilts (Fig. 9,
no. 6), collars and tutuli are covered with running spiral
patterns engraved with astonishing accuracy. In the later
phases of the Bronze Age the first delicacy is lost, but we
shall see a fine revival of curvilinear ornament in the latest
period that corresponds to the southern Hallstatt age.
Probably to our period belong also some rock-
engravings, found principally in Bohuslan, Southern
Sweden. As artistic productions they are far inferior to
the delicate geometrical art of the bronze-worker or to
the older naturalistic engravings of the Arctic Stone Age
hunters (Burkitt (49), p. 2 1 3), but they are none the less full
of human interest. They depict in fact scenes of daily
life — men at the plough, combats between warriors
protected by round shields, very like those we shall
meet in the Late Bronze Age, and naval battles between
great rowing galleys. Different in style from the fore-
going are the engravings on a Middle Bronze Age grave
kist unearthed at Kivik, Schonen. One slab depicts a
prince in a chariot, directing the slaughter of three naked
captives quite in the spirit of certain early Sumerian
scenes. Another slab (Fig. 21, no. 3) represents some
rather puzzling ritual ceremonies: its upper register
shows a band of musicians blowing long curved trumpets
or playing other less easily recognizable instruments;
below in the middle we see eight women (looking very
like seals !) grouped symmetrically about a large caul-
dron. The bottom register is taken up with another
group of captives being slaughtered.
The significance of these uncouth carvings cannot be
over-estimated. They afford the oldest positive proof of
the use of wheeled vehicles north of the Alps and prob-
ably also of the domestication of the horse. The use of
the musical instruments, well known in the succeeding
IJ2 THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
period, is here dated back well into the second millen-
.nium B.C. The cult scene is even more important; for it
anticipates a ceremony described by Strabo as observed
among the Cimbri who hailed from Denmark, and more
clearly depicted on a famous bronze cauldron of later
date discovered at Gundestrup in Jutland. The Greek
author describes how among the Teutonic tribe a
priestess used to cut the throats of prisoners of war so
that their blood gushed into a great cauldron. Omens
were obtained in this manner. The Kivik monument
implies a similar gruesome rite among the ancestral
Teutons about 1400 B.C., unrolling in salutary wise a
blood-stained page which we should gladly forget.
The free use of the spiral, and especially of interlacing
spiral figures exactly as at Mycenae, has been thought
to betoken Aegean influence, the Irish and Scottish
carvings being sometimes invoked as links. But in
point of fact the Teutonic Bronze Age was singularly
original and independent. Hungary, indeed, supplied
models for a number of types, but imported foreign
commodities are rare. Of course the metals, copper,
tin and gold, had to be imported from the South or West,
but they arrived raw and even unalloyed. Of foreign
manufactures we find from the East Mediterranean
glass beads, from Italy a sword with lead solder on the
hilt and from South-west Germany wheel-head pins,
but that is all. Conversely Teutonic bronzes were never
exported at this date. Save for a couple of two-piece
fibulae from the Tyrol and North Italy, the unmistak-
able bronzes we have described only found their way
very sporadically just across the border of the Teutonic
province into Holland and Thuringia. The imported
metals must have been paid for entirely in amber or
slaves. In the Late Bronze Age we shall find affairs
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE 173
changed and Teutonic manufactures reaching Hungary
and Switzerland.
THE TUMULUS BRONZE CULTURE
The heaths and upland country of Holland, Western
Germany, Bavaria, Upper Austria and South-western
Bohemia are dotted over with groups of barrows whose
furniture marks each as just a specialized manifestation
of a single culture. In the enormous area local differences
are only to be expected, and in fact extend to tools and
weapons as well as vases and ornaments. Still it is
convenient and justifiable to treat all the local groups
together as the Tumulus Bronze culture.
The tumulus-builders are thought by many authori-
ties to have been Kelts, but this, as we shall see, is
dubious. Physically they were distinctly mixed, in-
cluding both long-heads and round-heads as well as
mesaticephals. But they were the direct descendants
of the peoples who had occupied the South-west German
uplands and the Alpine slopes towards the close of the
Stone Age. Among these the Battle-axe folk, as in the
North, would have been the most prominent. Indeed
in Upper Bavarians), Alsace(86> and elsewhere in the
area barrows with Corded Ware have been found in or
near the Middle Bronze Age cemeteries, forming as it
were their nuclei. These highlanders and heathmen
learned metal-working late, like their Scandinavian
relatives, and learnt it from the Danubian school, as
the earliest bronzes even in Alsace and the French Jura
prove.
Economically the barrow-builders must have been
largely pastoral and semi-nomadic. There is no doubt
that they cultivated grain like our own ancestors, but
they did not settle in the fertile valleys like the Aunjetitz
174 THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
folk. Their favourite haunts were poor and hilly regions
that are to-day heavily timbered unless artificially
cleared, but that under the dry sub-boreal conditions
were heath or park-lands, as surviving xerophilous
plants indicate. As characteristic regions we might
mention the swampy tract of alluvial sands, covered
to-day with oak woods, north of Haguenau, near Stras-
burg, and the lovely slopes of boulder clay above the
little glacial lakes behind Munich.
Owing to their mode of life and perhaps under stress
of periods of real drought, the tumulus-builders spread
far. From centres in Upper Bavaria or Wlirtemberg the
slopes of the Hercynian forest in Bohemia were early
colonized, and by the Late Bronze Age we find allied
groups as far away as Bosnia. So, too, from the terraces
above the Upper Rhine and the Jura the greater part
of Eastern and Central France was overrun as far as
Charente.
Settlements are practically unknown, but the graves
are distinctive. The burial place is always marked by a
tumulus of earth or stones generally covering one or two
interments only, but sometimes serving as a collective
sepulchre. The remains were laid, not in a trench, but
just on the surface of the earth, protected by stones.
The normal rite was inhumation in the extended
position. But cases of cremation occur among even the
earliest Bronze Age interments as under Neolithic
barrows in the same area. This rite became increasingly
common as time advanced. But the ashes were generally
just deposited on the ground; only where the influence
of the Urn-field folk, described in the next chapter, was
strong in the Late Bronze Age, were the ashes enshrined
in cinerary urns.
The warrior was armed with an axe, a dagger, and a
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE 175
rapier or a spear with socketed head. The axe-heads
never possessed shaft-holes, but consisted of flanged
celts (everywhere), very slender winged celts (Fig. 4,
no, 2) (Wurtemberg and Upper Bavaria), palstaves
(Fig. 3, no. 5) (South-west Germany and Holland) or
Bohemian palstaves (Fig. 4, no. 4) (in the Palatinate
and Bohemia). The daggers were very seldom mounted
in bronze hilts, but at least in Bavaria bronze-hilted
rapiers are common. As a defence, the warrior carried a
round targe of wood or leather, studded with hollow
bronze knobs which alone have survived. The bow was
used in hunting, and bronze arrow-heads have been
found even in women's tombs though they are far from
common. Sickles too of the button type (Fig. 1 3, no. i)
were sometimes buried in the graves, but, with the
possible exception of a small group in Franconia and
Bavaria, single-edged knives appeared first in the Late
Bronze Age,
The dress was probably similar to that worn in
Denmark. Men fastened the cloak at the throat with a
single pin; women always used two crossed on the
breast. In Wurtemberg the type with an eyelet in the
swollen neck was at first the standard, to give place in
the Late Bronze Age to giant forms with ribbed necks
(Fig. 14, no. 10). In Bavaria and Bohemia mushroom-
headed varieties were popular, while in Alsace the nail-
headed type was once general, though later superseded
by wheel-headed and ribbed types. Bracelets were worn
by both sexes, exactly as in Denmark. The most general
type was a simple rod, tapering at both ends and bent
into an open ring, but forms like Fig, 1 5, nos. 3 and 4, and,
on the Rhine, cylinders were quite popular. Finger-rings
with ribbon bodies like Fig. 15, no. 10 were displayed
upon the fingers, and the legs were sometimes burdened
176 THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
with anklets like Fig. 15, no. 6. Such were an Alsatian
speciality. From the Rhine they spread westward into
East-central France, helping to mark the expansion of
the Tumulus culture. The girdle might be fastened
with a spiral-ended hook and was studded with hollow
bronze buttons, small spiked tutuli and, later, wheel-
pendants. Strings of amber and glass beads, bronze
wire coils and pendants including the sacral ivy leaf,
were hung round the neck though ingot torques were
sometimes worn.
The pottery, often very graceful, varies materially
from region to region. But the best proof of the
fundamental homogeneity of the whole culture is the
fact that any given local ware is represented by stray
specimens in almost all the other regions. In the Rhine
valley, Wlirtemberg and Upper Bavaria the commonest
shapes are hemispherical cups, jugs with globular bodies
and wide funnel-like necks, and big urns with short
necks and handles on the shoulders. In Bohemia and
the Palatinate the bowls may have pedestals and a handle,
the jugs bear four warts on the belly, and the urns are
squat with conical necks. The ornamentation is also
different. None the less pedestalled bowls quite com-
parable to the Bohemian are found also in Alsace.
The vases from Bohemia and the Palatinate are
decorated either by simply roughening the surface or
with incised hatched triangles or chevrons of cross-
hatched ribbons. Roughening was also used decoratively
in Wtirtemberg and the other groups, but conical warts
sitting on the shoulders are a common decorative device
(Fig. 22, no. i). The most distinctive of all, however, is
the so-called fretwork ornamentation (Kerbschniti). The
effect at first was similar to the " false relief* on British
food vessels, but in this case the little triangles and
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
177
2 .•§ .2 .1 3 £ 3
'S S S S *S
12
178 THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
lozenges were actually cut out of (excised from) the soft
clay (Fig. 22, no. 2), Later, stamps of various shapes
including circles came into use. In either case the
fretwork patterns are arranged, as on beakers, in zones
or radiating from the bases of vessels. Fretwork pottery
is particularly common in Wurtembergua) and on the
Upper Rhine but is represented also even in Bohemia
and Upper Austria, all down the Rhine and right
across France to the Departments of Card, Puy-de-
Dome and Charente. Similarly jugs or urns with
conical warts of Swabian style are found in Bohemia and
in Western Lorraine (Dept. Meurthe et Moselleu)).
THE ITALIAN TERREMARE
The third new group of the Middle Bronze Age had its
seat in Upper Italy, south of the Po. It is distinguished
by a curious sort of settlement termed a terramara^ the
4 'black earth ", full of organic refuse, having been used
as fertilizer by the local peasantry. A terramara is a low,
oblong mound, 12—15 feet high, formed by the debris
of prolonged occupation. On exploration it is found
that the settlement had been fortified and laid out on a
regular plan, common to most sites. The occupied area,
which may cover nearly 200,000 square metres (50
acres), is always trapezoid in shape and is surrounded by
a moat, 15—25 yards wide and about 12 feet deep. The
moat was traversed by a single bridge and could be
flooded by a canal joining it at the acute angle of the
trapezoid. Some 20 yards inside the moat rises a broad
rampart of earth, sloping on the outside but supported
within by a wooden construction, resembling a series
of small log-cabins and termed in Italian the contraforte.
The area thus enclosed reveals on excavation a regular
forest of piles. These it is supposed supported the
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE 179
actual huts which would have been " pile-dwellings on
dry land". They appear to be grouped along lanes
parallel to the long sides or at right angles thereto. On
the south side there is generally an earthen mound
encircled by an inner moat.
Two cemeteries were normally attached to each
terramara\ they are miniature terremare with moats of
their own. The inhabitants of the terremare (termed
terremaricolt] burned their dead, preserving the ashes in
cinerary urns. These are found packed close together in
the necropoles.
The terremarlcoli were prosperous farmers. The
number of sickles or moulds for their manufacture
testify to the importance of agriculture. The domestica-
tion and employment of horses is attested by cheek-
pieces from bits. But the terremaricolt were also skilled
craftsmen and keen traders. Metallurgy is illustrated
by numerous stone moulds, weaving by whorls, loom-
weights and spools of clay. Trade brought them, besides
metals, amber from the Baltic and glass beads from the
Eastern Mediterranean.
Polished stone celts and axes, flint knives, scrapers,
arrow-heads and even daggers are not uncommon in
a terramara^ and tools of bone and horn are varied and
plentiful. The distinctive bronze tools are flanged and
winged celts, flat chisels, little awls, and needles,
numerous grooved sickles, and a few single-edged
knives. The warrior carried flat triangular daggers with
bronze or horn hilts of ogival forms as well as three
types of sword — the short sword with flat blade that is
just an elongation of the flat dagger, a rapier of continen-
tal form, and another with a short tang formed by the
prolongation of a pronounced midrib which is derived
directly or through Sicily from Minoan types. Odd
I2-Z
ISO THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
ogival blades with a short flat tang and projecting
shoulders may have been hafted as daggers or as spear-
heads. But socketed spear-heads were also in use.
A great variety of pins were worn. Wiry headed
varieties, singly or doubly looped and blossoming into
spirals and double spirals, are the most distinctive.
Little bone wheels that are common may also have been
pin heads. Safety-pins of the violin-bow form are late
and rare in terremare. But double-edged razors were in
regular use and cast locally (Fig. 12, no. 5). Another
toilet article was a comb of bronze or bone.
Terramara pottery is characterized above all by the
extraordinary crescentic or horn-like projections that
surmount the vase handles (ansa lunata^ ansa cornuta).
Such are just exaggerations of a feature, found earlier
on Italian pottery, to which there are analogies in
Macedonia, Aetolia, Malta, Sicily and Sardinia. The
shapes include shallow cups, pedestalled vessels, and
inverted conical or biconical urns, generally without
necks. Warts, pinched out of the clay and often en-
circled by incisions, are the principal decorative device.
An approach to plastic art is seen in rude clay figurines
and models of animals. The bone combs, disks and hilts
are often richly carved with zig-zags, triangles, concen-
tric circles or even running spirals.
An important school of Italian prehistorians, founded
by the late Professor Pigorini, hold that the terremaricoli
were the original Italici from whom the Umbrians,
Latins and Sabines were alike descended. A genuine
terramara near Taranto and other more ambiguous
remains from Central Italy would be the monuments of
the "Aryanization" of the peninsula. It is at least
certain that the terramara industry became dominant
throughout its whole length. According to Pigorini
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE l8l
these Italic! would have been invaders from beyond the
Alps. But despite general analogies in sites like T6szeg
on the Tisza, no genuine terremare have been found in
the Danube basin, and the exact starting-point of the
Italic! remains uncertain.
HUNGARY
The Middle Bronze Age in Hungary begins with
the desertion of several Early Bronze Age sites and a
break in the ceramic record — a layer yielding no pot-
sherds— in others. Yet by the end of the period we find
the whole plain occupied by extensive communities,
each traceable by their pottery to Early Bronze Age
groups though the traditions are now differently blended.
At the same time a number of bronze types, found stray
or in hoards and dated by their context abroad, show
that Hungary was now the seat of a very vigorous and
original bronze industry.
The most distinctive forms of the period are the shaft-
hole axes described on p. 75 above (Fig. 23, no. i);
for celts were not manufactured locally to serve as axe-
heads. The forms are probably derived from Copper Age
models ; the distribution suggests that they were manu-
factured principally in North-east Hungary, the copper
being derived presumably from the Matra Mountains.
Thence they were exported as far as Upper Austria,
Bavaria, Mecklenburg, the Ukraine and Serbia. Besides
an axe the Hungarian warrior carried a spear with
socketed head or — very rarely — a rapier. Small ogival
daggers are occasionally found in the late graves. Few
tools can safely be assigned to the Middle Bronze Age,
but the ornaments were varied and distinctive, and
enjoyed a wide popularity even outside Hungary. Many
Fig. 23. (i) Hungarian battle axe. ^
(2) Disk-head pin, Hungarian type. £
(3) Mushroom pin of Hungarian type.
(4) Cylinder, Hungary. £
(5) Sacral ivy-leaf pendant, Hungary,
(6) Pectiform pendant^ Hungary, f
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE 183
Early Bronze Age types of pin remained in use through-
out the Middle Bronze Age. But the most characteristic
native type had a mushroom head vertically pierced (Fig.
23, no. 3) or with a lateral eyelet just below it. The
bracelets tended to be massive and richly engraved. T*he
ends are either thickened or coiled into opposing spiral
disks (Fig. 1 5, no. 3). Hardly less distinctive are tHfe
cylinders of bronze ribbon ending in wire spirals worn
on the legs and arms (Fig. 23, no. 4).
A great variety of pendants were sewn on the girdle,1
strung on necklaces, twisted in the locks or hung down
over the breasts or the middle of the back. Most are of
bronze, but gold specimens are known. Besides the
hollow buttons and spiked tutuli, common also in other
regions, many varieties of the sacral ivy-leaf pendant
were manufactured in Hungary and exported thence as
far as Alsace. Another important form is the pectiform
or comb-shaped variety that formed a sort of tassel to
ornamental chains hung down the back (Fig. 23, 5, 6).
The gold spiral lock-rings, current already in the Early
Bronze Age, continued to be worn.
Great aesthetic taste was shown by the Hungarians
both in the grace of their ornaments and in the magnifi-
cent patterns engraved upon their weapons. In North
Hungary in particular, scrolls luxuriate over the blades
and butts of axes as lavishly as the more austere spirals oi
contemporary Teutonic art (Fig. 23, no. i).
The remains from the relatively sterile layer at T6szeg
suffice to show that even in the first half of the Middle
Bronze Age the Hungarians had at their command the
motive power of horses. Apart from these layers and a
few inhumation burials, connected deposits are rare as ii
there had been a considerable exodus at the end of the
Early Bronze Age. The lacuna may be the reflex of the
184 THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
abruptly appearing invaders of Italy described in the
last section as the terremaricoli. Nevertheless before the
period closes the abundant remains must betoken a large
and settled population, descended from old local stocks.
We rely for our information chiefly upon cemeteries
which may be divided by burial rites and pottery into
several groups. In the largest group termed Pannonian,
extending from the Austrian borders south-eastward
into Central Hungary, as well as in the cemeteries of the
Banat and North-east Serbia that continue the same
line, cremation was the sole rite observed. In Southern
Hungary and Slavonia inhumations also occur, and in
the extreme north-east the latter rite was alone practised.
The tombs are poorly furnished with bronzes, but
these conform to the Middle Bronze Age types familiar
from the hoards. A wealth of vases counterbalances this
poverty in metal grave goods. The ashes were enclosed
in cinerary urns, in the Pannonian group generally
great pitchers with trumpet-like necks, tall piriform
bodies and one or two handles. The South Hungarian
urns belong to the class of two-storied pots (Fig. 22,
no. 6). The accessory vases and some urns are elaborately
decorated. In the Pannonian group proper wide bands
of true fretwork (excised, not stamped) are combined
with stab-and-drag lines, uniting impressed concentric
circles (Fig. 22, nos. 3, 4). In the more southerly groups
fretwork is no longer used, while the incised lines often
form running spirals, maeanders or rosettes. In the
north-east the main decorative device was the conical
wart, applied or pinched up and often surrounded by
deep grooves.
Both in Slavonia and Serbia art was also manifested
in clay figurines decorated in the same style as the vases.
They represent a female personage, wearing a richly
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE 185
embroidered bodice and a flounced skirt and decked
with necklaces and pendants. The most famous idol
of this class, found at Kli£evac in North Serbia, was
unfortunately lost during the war. The same region has
yielded model thrones, axes and other clay votives.
The vase forms in most cases can be traced back to
Early Bronze Age groups. Pannonian jugs and dishes
have forerunners at Gata and T6szeg; the hour-glass
mug of Perjamos reappears in the Banat cemeteries,
Pannonian ware is decorated in just the same technique
as the earlier Slavonian ware. Hence the Hungarian
plain cannot have been entirely deserted by the Early
Bronze Age population, though some of the original
groups had shifted their territories or amalgamated with
neighbours.
THE RH6NE CULTURE
Stray flanged celts and flat daggers of bronze as well
as bone copies of common bronze pins have been found
in several of the later " Neolithic " lake-villages of
Switzerland. It would seem that the pile-dwellers lived
on in a stone age throughout the Early Bronze Age
and part of the succeeding period. By that time, however,
we find in the Rhone valley, but unconnected with
the lacustrine settlements, graves furnished with a
distinctive series of bronzes. The tombs are either small
megalithic kists, containing a number of corpses, or
individual graves without any barrow over them. The
bronze industry, here represented, is inspired mainly by
Bohemian and Hungarian traditions though there are
some indications of influence from the Iberian Penin-
sula. The types, however, developed along quite in-
dividual lines. Distinctive are the spatuliform celts and
the triangular daggers, often bronze-hilted. Besides
186 THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
pins with rolled or even knot-heads, trefoil and disk
forms are characteristic, the latter being doubtless a
local creation. So, in addition to simple rod bangles and
ingot torques, broad bronze collars were developed in a
specialized variant as described on p. 122. No pottery
is known from these graves.
The engraved bronzes illustrate a continued develop-
ment of that system of purely rectilinear decoration
that had been almost universal in the Early Bronze Age.
The extent and age of the Rhone culture is not yet
exactly determined. It is only mentioned here because,
as we shall see, it is a prominent constituent of the
oldest culture to which the name Keltic can be applied.
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE IN
GREAT BRITAIN
In the British Isles the Middle Bronze Age is merely
a continuation of the previous period, lacking the sharp
demarcation observed in Italy or Southern Germany.
Types distinctive of the period on the continent — early
palstaves, ogival daggers, rapiers, socketed spear-heads
and button sickles — are found stray or in hoards,
particularly in the south; north of the Tay no rapiers
have been reported and even early palstaves are rare.
Yet there is no doubt that rapiers were actually manu-
factured in England, since moulds for their production
are found there — practically the only known rapier
moulds. These universal Middle Bronze Age shapes
are associated in hoards with specialized local forms —
celts with broad flanges near the butt (Fig. 3, no. 4),
tanged chisels, spear-heads with loops (Fig. 10, no. 4),
true torques, wide armlets with horizontal ridges and a
sort of pin with a gigantic ring-head. Even socketed
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE 187
sickles or double-edged razor blades are exceptionally
associated with early palstaves and rapiers.
Nevertheless, save for a few ogival daggers, no
distinctively Middle Bronze Age types are found in
graves. Yet some of our barrows must obviously be
contemporary with our Middle Bronze Age hoards.
We therefore assign to this phase cremated interments,
accompanied by vessels of Early Bronze Age antecedents
whose descendants admittedly belong to the Late Bronze
Age. Yet such graves may contain flat triangular daggers,
and even stone battle-axes, though not flint daggers.
The pot form, thus marked out as Middle Bronze
Age, is the so-called cinerary urn in its earlier versions.
It is just an enlargement of the food vessel. The
commonest type, originating probably in Southern
England, is known as the overhanging-rim urn. It
undergoes a regular typological degeneration during
the period. The oldest form, which is partly contem-
porary with the latest beakers, had an inverted conical
body distinguished by a definite shoulder from the well-
marked concave neck, which is surmounted by a broad
overhanging rim or collar (Fig. 24, no. i). Before the
end of the Middle Bronze Age the neck disappears,
leaving us with rim and body only (Fig. 24, no. 2). In
the Late Bronze Age further decadence produces cor-
doned and bucket urns in which all that is left is one or
two ridges encircling the body to represent the overhang
of the original rim or this and also the shoulder below
the former neck (Fig. 24, no. 3). A contemporary form,
originating in Northern England or Scotland and un-
known south of the Thames, is just a magnification of
the classical food vessel with grooved shoulder. It is
therefore termed an enlarged food vessel.
These large pots are made of very coarse clay and
Fig. 24. British cinerary urns.
(1) Overhanging rim type, early. ^ (7) Cornish urn. ^
(2) Overhanging rim type, later form. fs (8) Globular urn. ^
(3) Cordoned urn, Scotland. T\ (9) Incense cup with slits.
(4) Bucket urn, Dorset. ^ '-x T 1
(5) Encrusted urn, Scotland. ^
(6) Urn of Type 3, group 2. ^
(10) Incense cup.
(n) Grape cup. f
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE 189
lack any slip or polish. They are none the less elaborately
decorated, principally on the wide collar or the bevelled
moulding inside the lip. The ornamentation is executed
with a cord, with a chain-looped braid, or by simple
incision. The cog-wheel technique and false relief have
been abandoned. The patterns are simple zig-zags,
triangles, chequers, lattices, and herring-boning.
Contemporary with these urns, often used like them
to contain cremated remains and not seldom associated
with them in the same grave, go a variety of small vases
termed "incense cups" or "pigmy vessels". These are
often of much finer clay than the big urns, but seldom
approach the delicacy or technical excellence of beaker
ware. The decoration includes incised lines combined
with dots forming figures such as lozenges. One group
of pigmy vessels, sometimes termed "grape cups", are
covered with knobby projections (Fig. 24, no. 10). The
latter, though quite different from the conical warts of
Swabian and Hungarian pottery, recall the ornamen-
tation on a class of Late Neolithic wares from the Danube
basin. Another variety of incense cup has triangular slits
in the walls, producing a sort of lattice effect (Fig. 24,
no, 9). Perforations in the walls are indeed a common
feature in the whole class of pigmy vessels.
The funerary pottery and bronzes produce a rather
depressing picture of our civilization at this date. That
is to some extent offset by the discovery in graves of the
period of cups of shale, amber and gold(88) that are, for
their age, unique west of the Aegean. The shale and
amber cups are simple flat-bottomed vessels with ribbon
handles. In shape they recall the wooden cups from
Denmark and seem also to have been turned on a pole
lathe. Ornamental horizontal grooves may encircle the
body, parallel to the rim, and decorate the handle. Five
190 THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
shale and two amber cups are known, all from Southern
England, west of Brighton. The gold cup, from a cairn
at Rillaton in Cornwall, is of similar shape, hammered
out of a single piece of metal and decorated with
horizontal corrugations. This group of vessels, unique
in North-western Europe, shows that Britain had not
lost her originality in the Middle Bronze Age. More-
over, the islands retained their place in European trade.
Amber was still imported from Denmark and beads of
blue faience came by coastal routes from Crete or
Egypt1. The most notable of the latter imports are the
segmented beads. The type was current in Crete from
the end of Middle Minoan times (1600 B.C.), but the
trinkets found in Britain are said to resemble rather
Egyptian specimens dated to the twelfth century.
Similar beads or bone copies thereof have been found
in late graves of El Argar type in South-eastern Spain
and in megalithic tombs in South-west France and
Brittany. Britain's principal export at this period would
presumably be tin. But British and Irish gold torques,
looped spear-heads and other British types of the Middle
Bronze Age reached Northern France in considerable
numbers. The spread of the palstave to Western Spain
may also be connected with the Atlantic trade from the
British Isles.
Dwellings of the period in Britain cannot be dis-
tinguished. It is possible, however, that hill camps
were already being built. A hoard of rapier blades was,
it is reported, unearthed at the bottom of the trench
encircling that of Drumcoltram in Dumfriesshire. The
fort stands, not on the summit of the hill, but on a spur
1 Some authorities maintain that many of our vitreous beads were
manufactured locally from slag. It remains certain that they imitate
Aegean or Egyptian models.
THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE
191
projecting westward from the hill about 675 feet above
sea-level. The neck and flanks of the spur are defended
by a wide annular moat, 9 feet deep and 30 wide at the
brim. The upcast from it has been piled up inside to
form a rampart 9 feet high. A causeway 8 feet wide
leads across the moat to a gap in the rampart. The fort
is a good example of the simpler type widely distributed
in the British Isles. The majority at least of the more
complex forms belong to the Iron Age.
For the rest, life in prehistoric Britain had undergone
no visible change since the Karly Bronze Age. Only
after the lapse of a considerable interval was our rather
sleepy development rudely interrupted by the Late
Bronze Age invasion.
Bronze figure
from Sardinia
CHAPTER VI
THE LATE BRONZE AGE
Y N contrast to the apparent peace and prosperity of the
JL preceding period, the Late Bronze Age was an epoch
of turmoil and migration though it witnessed immense
industrial and economic progress, forced upon the
barbarians by these times of stress. The growth of
population in the tranquil centuries of the Middle
Bronze Age among peoples who had not yet settled
down to the laborious methods of really sedentary
cultivation resulted for the first time in a genuine
pressure and congestion on the land. Climatic condi-
tions— intensified drought followed ultimately by a
return to moister and colder conditions that favoured
the spread of forest at the expense of pastures — may
have aggravated the land hunger in individual areas.
The cumulative effect of these factors was to produce a
bitter struggle for the fertile valleys in Central Europe
and the uprooting of small hordes. The regime of
bloody tribal wars, later described so grimly in the
pages of Tacitus and profitable only to the Roman
slave-dealer, had already been inaugurated. The reper-
cussions of the turmoil reached Britain on the one hand
and the East Mediterranean coast on the other, there
to be complicated by events in Asia that still elude our
ken. But the Mycenaean civilization collapsed under
barbarian pressure, and northerners overran Anatolia,
threatening the Egyptian and Hittite Empires.
These latter disturbances hampered mining and
metallurgy in Asia Minor. And Assyrian military
requisitions and monopolistic control of ores further
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 193
restricted the supply. At the same time the state of
universal war increased the demand to unprecedented
proportions. In continental Europe we witness not only
the struggle for land but also one for the control of
ores, accompanied by a great intensification of mining
activities and the growth of a trade in scrap-metal,
marked by the so-called founders' hoards. In Hither
Asia the contest for booty was equally accompanied by
a quest for new supplies of metal. The merchants and
craftsmen of Phoenicia in particular, cut off by barbarian
inroads and Assyrian monopolies from local supplies,
sought compensations in the West. As at the beginning
of the Age of Metals, fresh bands of prospectors sailed
from the Eastern Mediterranean, combining kidnapping
and piracy with legitimate trade as the Odyssey so brightly
indicates. Their activities helped to introduce to the
western world the secret of the new metal, iron, and a
whole series of new types and processes.
Yet the westward tracks of Oriental traders crossed
paths already furrowed at an earlier date by pirate
galleys from the West Mediterranean isles. The raiders
whose descents on the Oriental empires are such a
feature of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries before
our era may, when finally repulsed, have carried with
them westward some of the arts and organization learnt
during periods of mercenary service under Hittites and
Egyptians. Despite the doubts of eminent Orientalists,
the Shardana, Shakalasha and Tursha who harried the
confines of Egypt were surely in some sense Sardinians,
Sicilians and Etruscans. Whether they hailed in the
first instance from Sardinia, Sicily and Italy or only
retreated there after failures on the eastern coasts, is
far more doubtful (90). Certain it is that the islands and
peninsula were the seats of a curious Late Bronze Age
CBA «3
194 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
civilization which, despite a strong Oriental flavour,
was based at least industrially on Central European
rather than on Aegean or Asiatic traditions. The penin-
sula and islands being now incorporated in the conti-
nental economic system and having taken over from the
Aegean the role of mediators in the diffusion of Oriental
inventions, a few words on the cultures of Sicily,
Sardinia and Italy in the age of transition from bronze
to iron will form a necessary prelude to any account of
events north of the Alps.
At the same time one general aspect of life in the
latter region and also in the East Mediterranean area
must be touched upon here; I refer to the spread of
cremation cemeteries termed urnfields — a phenomenon
already attributed to the Middle Bronze Age in Hun-
gary and Upper Italy, but now becoming general from
the Euphrates to the Irish Channel. The bodies of the
dead were cremated, their ashes enshrined in cinerary
urns and these buried close together with other vessels
in extensive cemeteries, termed urnfields. The grave is
seldom marked by a barrow; on the other hand cinerary
urns were often deposited as secondary interments in
earlier barrows. In several parts of Central Europe it
was the practice to bore a hole through the walls or
base of the cinerary urn. German archaeologists term
such an aperture the ghost-hole (Seelenloch\ believing
that it was designed to allow the soul of the departed to
escape from the jar that contained his mortal remains.
It should be remembered that cremation was not a
new rite, first introduced during the Late Bronze Age,
Even in Early Helladic graves on Levkas we find burnt
human bones enclosed in large jars. And there are
instances of Neolithic cremations from Central Europe,
Brittany and England. Isolated instances occur widely
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 195
during the Early Bronze Age, and the practice was by
no means rare in the Tumulus culture of the Middle
Bronze Age. To the same period we have assigned a
number of barrows covering inurned ashes from the
British Isles. Even urnfields may, in Hungary and
North Italy, go back to the Middle Bronze Age, but
they become general first in the Late Bronze Age or the
contemporary Early Iron Age of Greece and Syria.
Conversely it must be insisted that inhumation was
not universally abandoned in the latter period. It
remained the regular rite in the Illyrian regions, South-
ern Italy, Sicily and Macedonia till well on in the Iron
Age and was still freely practised also west of the Rhine
and in parts of Greece. Nowhere, indeed, would burial
rite alone constitute a reliable criterion of age. More-
over, in view of the wide distribution of the rite in
earlier times, the racial movements inferred simply from
the appearance of cremation in Greece and Syria at the
beginning of the Early Iron Age (equivalent there to
our Late Bronze Age) are very insecurely based.
We begin our account of Late Bronze Age cultures
with Italy and the adjacent isles, even though iron was
rapidly replacing bronze there; for in the Early Iron
Age deposits we find bronze tools of the types still
exclusively used north of the Alps, and in the latter
regions types of the more southern Iron Age appear in a
purely Bronze Age context. Greece on the other hand
may still be excluded as having no direct influence on
the bronze industry north of the Alps after its very
early passage into the Iron Age.
SICILY
During the earlier phases of the Bronze Age, as in
the previous Copper Age, the culture of Sicily (44) had
196 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
maintained an essentially East Mediterranean character.
During the first half of Orsi's Siculan II period, which
corresponds to our Middle Bronze Age, the native
culture had been dominated by Minoan industry and
art. Palaces were built with stone foundations as in
Greece, and shrines furnished with ritual objects of a
Minoan character. The dead were buried in rock-hewn
family vaults reminiscent of the usual Mycenaean
chamber tombs, though carrying on a tradition rooted
in the island since the Copper Age (Orsi's Siculan I).
The Siculan II bronzes are inspired directly by Minoan
models, though mostly of local manufacture. So we
find long rapiers referable to Type II a from the Shaft
Graves of Mycenae (p. 82) and daggers equally of
Minoan ancestry. The common razors (Fig. 12, no. 3),
though a specifically Siculan variant, have likewise
Cretan prototypes. Fibulae of violin-bow form were
worn as east of the Adriatic. And direct imports from
Greece were plentiful: the early tombs are furnished
with a comparative abundance of Mycenaean (L.M. Ill)
vases and Late Minoan beads were worn.
In the later half of the Siculan II period, represented
by cemeteries like Cassibile and Finnochito, farther
inland than those described above, the industrial
orientation of the island had changed. The dead were
indeed still often buried in chamber tombs, a habit
which persisted into the full Iron Age or Siculan III.
The pottery, too, preserved native traditions enlarged
by the inclusion of orientalizing forms such as askoi.
The safety-pins evolved farther along the separate lines
sketched on p. 114. But the remaining bronzes tend
to conform more and more to standard types current
at the same period in Upper Italy and the Late Bronze
Age north of the Alps.
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 197
Shaft-hole axes indeed persist in a local form even
into Sicilian III, but beside them we find in hoards
winged celts, socketed celts and lug-adzes. The spear-
heads have proper cast sockets and sometimes eyelets in
the base of the blade. The commonest razors now
conform exactly to the rectangular "Villanovan" type
with the handle riveted on (Fig. 12, no. 8) despite
some interesting transitional forms with maple leaf
blades and flat tangs. This is the period of the serpentine
and elbow fibulae (Fig. 14, no. 15) supplemented by
simple arcs.
A very similar culture reigned at the same time in
Southern Italy, a region that had always been closely
allied to Sicily since Neolithic times. One notable type,
assignable strictly to the local Iron Age, was a short
sword provided with a flange carried right round the
flat tang to hold the plates of the hilt and the pommel.
The type is directly derived from a familiar L.M. Ill
short sword,
In both regions large founders* hoards (93) attest at
once an economic reorganization and social disturbance.
Both Oriental and northern elements have been obtruded
upon the native culture in a manner not yet plain. At
the same time the resultant cultures exerted an influence
on the West as the Siculan fibulae from the hoard at
Huelva show (92). How the Siculan and South Italian
spear-heads with eyelets in the base of the blade are
related to the similar and contemporary British type
is less clear.
SARDINIA
Far more insular and consequently puzzling is the
vigorous civilization that grew up in the great island
farther north. Sardinia is rich in copper and silver*
198 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
Even during the Copper Age (3) it had been an impor-
tant centre of population and industry. Elaborate rock-
cut tombs, sometimes carved with bulls' protomae and
including marble statuettes among their grave goods,
disclose Aegean inspiration. On the other hand,
numerous bell-beakers and West European daggers
are clearly occidental features. A similar blending of
Eastern and Western traits characterizes the Late
Bronze Age of the island.
Chambered tombs continued to be used as burial
places even then, but have for the most part been
plundered. The period is better known from dwellings
— peculiar round towers termed nuraghi. The Sardinian
Bronze Age is therefore often alluded to as the nuragic
period.
A nuraghe(95) is an approximately conical tower, built
without mortar, of rough, almost megalithic blocks.
The only external opening was a low, tunnel-like door-
way that eventually gave access to a large beehive-
chamber. A winding stair in the thickness of the wall
led to one or more upper storeys of similar plan. The
nuraghi were evidently the castles of martial chieftains.
At their feet clustered the round beehive huts of their
peasant henchmen. Such strongholds are strung out at
relatively short intervals along the valleys or fertile
plains, evidently implying a peculiar clan organization
in which the need for defence outweighed all other
considerations.
In addition to the fortresses a number of partly coeval
structures of a sacral character have recently been
explored by Prof. Taramelli(97). These generally include
subterranean sanctuaries from which numerous votive
bronzes may be recovered. That at Santa Anastasia
consisted of an outer temple with a fafade of dressed
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 199
stone, from which a flight of steps led down to a circular
pit covered with a corbelled roof.
The castles had been long occupied and repeatedly
plundered, leaving few relics of their original occupants,
A better idea of the bronze industry of the nuragic age
may be obtained from numerous hoards (96) that testify
in some cases to the piety of the islanders, in others to
the disturbed conditions of the times. These depots
belong for the most part to a time when iron was already
in general use on the Italian mainland, but still contain
archaic types, directly descended from quite ancient
models and accordingly produced by a school of crafts-
men whose divergent specialization must have begun
in pure Bronze Age times. Their archaic traditions are
rooted mainly in continental workshops. Few industrial
types or weapons are East Mediterranean or Asiatic,
though eastern influences are conspicuous in the votive
bronzes. So, among the axes, curiously splayed flanged
celts, two-eared palstaves and two-looped socketed celts
were the commonest types current. (The founders'
hoards contain also old Copper Age flat celts collected
for recasting.) On the other hand, double-axes and
axe-adzes might be Aegean types, though the tubular
projection that surrounds the shaft-hole is more remini-
scent of Hungary. Again the typical weapons are
curious bronze-hilted daggers, rather like Early Bronze
Age forms, or very archaic triangular or ogival types,
swords with pronounced midrib and spur for the hilt
or flanged tang. Socketed spear-heads, socketed sickles
and rectangular razors, resembling the Villanovan blades
but that the handle was cast in one piece with the blade,
are also conspicuous. The rather rough pottery includes
notably askoi and jugs with thrown-back necks and cut-
away lips, both old Aegean and Anatolian shapes.
2OO THE LATE BRONZE AGE
In the nuragic sanctuaries and hoards we find an
extraordinary variety of votive statuettes and models
in bronze. Figures of warriors, crude and barbaric in
execution but full of life, are particularly common. The
warrior was armed with a dagger and bow-and-arrows or
a sword, covered with a two-horned helmet and pro-
tected by a circular buckler. The dress and armament
leave no doubt as to the substantial identity of the
Sardinian infantryman with the raiders and mercenaries
depicted on Egyptian monuments as "Shardana". At
the same time numerous votive barques, also of bronze,
demonstrate the importance of the sea in Sardinian life.
This extraordinary culture accordingly shows indica-
tions of relations with the West — two-eared palstaves,
socketed sickles — with Hungary and even perhaps with
the Caucasus (statuettes and other models very like the
Sardinian have turned up there) in addition to Central
Europe and Upper Italy. Amber beads from the
nuraghi may even mean connections with the far North.
Were the Sardinian smiths originative innovators whose
new models were carried westward and imitated there,
or merely slaves who copied at the dictation of their
pirate masters the odd types the latter picked up in
distant raids ? And how are the nuraghi related to the
Scottish brochs, similar in several architectural details
and evidently symptomatic of an analogous clan organi-
zation ? Above all, were the Sardinians of the Late —
nay belated— -Bronze Age descendants of the Copper
Age population who had seen service under Egyptians
and Hittites, or did new arrivals from Asia Minor or
the Caucasus dominate these ? Such questions inevitably
rise only to be dismissed as unsolved.
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 2OI
THE VILLANOVA CULTURE IN ITALY
While Sicily, South Italy and Sardinia were new
and by no means secure acquisitions of the continental
economic province, it had included Upper Italy since
the beginning of the Bronze Age. There, as noted in
the last chapter, the dominant cultural group during
the Middle Bronze Age was that of the terremaricoli who
even penetrated to the extreme South as well. A later
phase in the same people's culture is illustrated by the
urnfields of Bismantova and Fontanella south of the Po,
of Pianello in the Marche (East Central Italy) and
Timmari in Apulia.
These cemeteries are marked as later than the typical
terremare by the types of razor, safety-pin and bracelet.
The razor has a quadrangular blade with separate handle
riveted on (Fig. 1 2, no. 8). In addition to violin-bow
fibulae, generally with beads on, and sometimes with
figure 8 twists in (after the style of Fig. 14, no. 14), the
bow, simple arched bows and others with two loops were
current. Ingot torques with twisted wire bodies and
wire finger-rings with spiral ends were also worn. The
distinctive pot form is already a storeyed or biconical
urn. Such consist of a base in the form of an inverted
conical bowl with inturned rim surmounted by a conical
neck with everted lip. The parts are separated by a
pronounced shoulder rather than a keel. The ornament,
restricted to the upper cone, is limited to incised tri-
angles, chevrons, "|_J~ or cO figures and dimples or
warts encircled by grooves (Fig. 25, no. i), A hoard,
of the same date (Randall-Maclver considers it later),
indicates that cups of beaten bronze, decorated with
embossed knobs, were already in use. These cemeteries
may be dated between 1200 and 1050 B.C.
2O2 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
A little later a belt of Italy from the Adige to the
Tiber is found to be thickly settled by an industrious
folk, termed Villanovans after the suburb of Bologna
where their culture was first identified. Pigorini and his
disciples hold that they were just the descendants of the
terremaricoli\ they would then be the Umbri and Latini
of Roman tradition. Randall-Maclver prefers to invoke
a second invasion from an unknown "Hungary" to
explain the Villanovans. Assuming the first interpreta-
tion to be the more correct, as it is the more economical,
we may call the northern Villanovans Umbrians, the
southern ones, differentiated from the former by minor
peculiarities, Latins. We must note, too, that the
Villanovan culture is divided between three chrono-
logical phases, termed respectively Benacci I, Benacci II
and Arnoaldi after the peasants on whose farms typical
cemeteries were dug up. Iron was in use throughout
these three periods and the two last are excluded
altogether from the purview of this book.
The Villanovans, like their ancestors of the terremare^
were primarily peasant farmers, living in mean huts
grouped in villages of very modest size. The round huts
themselves with walls of wattle and daub are represented
for us by the models used as ossuaries among the
"Latins" (Fig. 25, no. 5); the famous temple of Vesta
preserves a glorified version of the same primitive
hut.
But these farming communities included skilled
metal-workers and traders. Round Bologna vast depots
of scrap-metal, the so-called " foundries M, have been
discovered. Old tools, weapons and ornaments were
gathered here for resmelting from every corner of
Europe as the types included in the hoards show; even
British socketed sickles are represented. In return for
THE LATE BRONZE AGE
203
204 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
such scrap, for ores, gold, amber and salt, Villanovan
bronzes were exported as far as Denmark and Transyl-
vania. At the same time relations, direct or indirect,
were maintained with the Eastern Mediterranean;
glass beads from Villanovan graves leave no doubt on
this score. Villanovan bronze work agrees too closely
with Phoenician and Assyrian for the resemblance to be
accidental. And from that quarter came eventually
knowledge of the new metal, iron. In Benacci I times,
however, that material is represented only by a few
small objects that might have been imports.
The graves were simply holes in the ground, some-
times lined with stone slabs, in which the cinerary urn
was deposited. The ossuary itself was sometimes en-
closed within a large jar termed a dolion^ especially in
Etruria and Latium. In this region, too, a receptacle
hollowed out of a block of stone occasionally replaced
the dolion* The dolion is generally a rough two-storeyed
jar. The Villanovan ossuary is equally two storeyed. It
resembles a bowl with inverted rim and a horizontal
handle, surmounted by a conical neck with splayed rim.
It is, that is, a biconical urn closely related to those
from Bismantova or Pianello, though with a broader
shoulder (Fig. 25, no. 2). Often it was actually made of
two pieces of hammered bronze united by rivets. More
commonly the vessel is of black carboniferous pottery
ornamented with elaborate maeanders, triangles, lozen-
ges and rosettes. Sometimes small bronze studs were
set in the clay to enhance the effect. As noted, the Latins
used hut models as ossuaries. The urn was covered in
the Umbrian area by a dish, in the Latin often by a
helmet. While cremation was the general rite, isolated
inhumation graves are known from all districts.
The commonest tools are celts with terminal wings
THE LATE BRONZE AGE
and very wide blades, knives with a spur-like tang,
quadrangular double-edged razors (Fig. 12, no, 8)
or semilunar single-edged specimens (a later type),
tweezers and fish-hooks. The best known weapon is
the socketed spear-head, but antennae swords (Fig. 8,
no. 1 1) were imported and presumably used. The head
was protected with ovoid bronze casques, surmounted
by broad, decorated crests. Horses were controlled by
bronze bits, the cheek-pieces in some instances taking
the form of stylized steeds. Among the ornaments may
be mentioned broad girdles of hammered bronze, pins
surmounted by small knobs or terminating in a shep-
herd's crook, simple arc fibulae and early developments
thereof, massive bracelets with overlapping ends, and
ribbon cylinders. Besides ossuaries, cups and buckets
(situlae) were made of hammered bronze.
Villanovan art is unmistakable. The vases, girdles
and helmets of bronze are decorated with rows of
bosses, beads or concentric rings, all embossed, and
sometimes supplemented by engraved lines that re-
produce the patterns known already from the pottery.
A very distinctive and popular motive is moreover a
pair of birds' heads projecting from a circle or wheel
(Fig. 27, no. 3). The design is presumably a solar symbol
connected with the sun disk of the Egyptians probably
through a Hittite or Phoenician variant.
THE LAUSITZ CULTURE
The knowledge of iron-working naturally traversed
the Alps from Italy with a material retardation, so that
even throughout Benacci I times a pure Late Bronze
Age was ruling in Central Europe. Here two or three
great urn field groups succeed the Early Bronze Age
cultures in the fertile valleys and along the riverine
206 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
trade routes while the Tumulus culture persists in the
uplands and heaths, modified by these neighbours.
The most conspicuous of the urnfield cultures is
known by the name of Lausitz, a part of Saxony and
Western Silesia where it is richly represented. It
originated there or farther east out of Aunjetitz antece-
dents, possibly mixed with other undefined ingredients.
From this cradle it spread to occupy the whole area
from the Saale to the Vistula and from the Spree to the
Austrian Danube and the Slovakian mountains.
The Lausitz folk were primarily peasant farmers, but
were at pains to control trade routes and supplies of ore.
In their communities dwelt competent smiths whose
moulds, anvils and founders' hoards have come down
to us. The people dwelt probably in log-cabins, built of
trunks laid horizontally and supported by posts, quite
like the dwellings of American pioneers. The houses
were normally long one-roomed halls with the entry on
the small side.
The dead were cremated, and their ashes, enclosed in
cinerary urns, deposited in extensive cemeteries, some-
times under a barrow. The characteristic Lausitz ossuary
is constituted by two truncated cones placed base to
base. It was normally covered by a dish and ac-
companied by a high-handled mug, an amphora and a
rough pot. In later graves, vases with side spouts, termed
feeding-bowls, vessels in the shape of animals, and clay
rattles occur. Apart from the rough pots, Lausitz vases
are generally smooth and often burnished. At first they
were buff in colour; later dark-faced wares became more
popular, and graphite was even used to intensify the
effect. The ossuary is normally plain, save for scratches
radiating from the base. Other vessels were decorated
at first with large conical warts projecting out of a round
THE LATE BRONZE AGE
207
2O8 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
depression. Later warts gave place to flutings or
corrugations, oblique or forming semicircles (Fig. 26).
The Lausitz people used celts with terminal wings
and an ear, or a socketed form, knives with a spur for
the attachment of the handle or with a metal handle
terminating in a ring, button sickles and eventually
horse-shoe razors and tweezers. But celts and perforated
axes of stone, arrow-heads of flint or bone and many
implements of horn and bone were still used. The
favourite weapons were spears with lanceolate socketed
heads, and arrows, tipped with flint, bone or socketed
bronze points, supplemented by comparatively rare
swords with flanged tangs. The horse had certainly
been domesticated. He was controlled by bits ending:
i_ i i J &
in horn cheek-pieces.
Common ornaments in Lausitz graves are pins with a
vertically pierced eyelet in a spur projecting from the
shaft, massive armlets with overlapping tapering ends,
cylinders, ingot torques with twisted body, finger-rings
of several coils of wire terminating in spirals, spectacle-
spiral pendants and flat buttons with a loop on the back.
Safety-pins were rarely worn; all were of the two-
member family with a flattened oval bow. Beads of
glass or amber are only occasionally found in graves.
Gold, on the other hand, chiefly in the form of wire, is
not uncommon in Bohemian settlements. The precious
metal must have been carried in this form as a medium
of exchange, but curious ornaments were made by
plaiting gold wire together. Finally in the later phase
of the Lausitz culture a few bronze cups of Italian
style found their way to Bohemia.
This culture was cradled, as we have indicated, in a
southerly corner of the North European plain. Thence
it spread over the mountains into Bohemia and across
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 2O9
Moravia into Lower Austria and Slovakia. On the
borders of its homeland it grew into the so-called
Silesian culture which likewise spread southward and
was flourishing in Eastern Bohemia and Moravia when
iron was introduced into those regions along the amber
trade route from Italy to East Prussia.
In Central Bohemia the Lausitz invaders met the
people of the Tumulus culture advancing from the
West as well as remnants of the old Aunjetitz popula-
tion. Under these conditions there arose here in the
latest Bronze Age (Kraft E) a specialized group, termed
the Knovi'z culture, which deserves a brief mention.
Besides its urnfield cemeteries we know here deep pits,
some perhaps dwellings, others rubbish pits or silos.
In the latter we find, together with broken animal bones
and other kitchen refuse, human bones, hacked about
with knives and split to extract the marrow. Evidently
cannibalism was not unknown to this people in Central
Europe. Civil servants, engaged in suppressing the
practice in Africa or New Guinea, may like to remember
that it was current in Europe 3000 years ago, and that
among a comparatively advanced group. For the can-
nibals made splendid pots. Their cinerary urns are
based upon a degenerate Lausitz ossuary that has lost
its angularity, surmounted by a swelling neck, so as to
give the impression of two vases one on the top of the
other. Broad-brimmed bowls with twisted pillar-like
handles rising from the shoulder also deserve mention.
THE ALPINE URNFIELDS
The Knoviz culture already shows the influence of
the South-west Bohemian Tumulus culture which in its
turn had been profoundly modified by contact with a
second group of urnfields. The latter had developed on
CBA 14
210 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
the Upper Danube and its tributaries in Austria, Bavaria
and the Tyrol, whence it spread down the Rhine and
across Switzerland. This Alpine culture is a far less
coherent group than the Lausitz ; probably it had several
roots constituting originally distinct groups, and no
doubt it absorbed in its expansion diverse elements. It
may have originated among some descendants of Early
Bronze Age folk dwelling in the valleys (at Gemeinlebarn
in Lower Austria and Straubing in Bavaria both periods
are represented in the same cemetery), influenced (what-
ever that may mean) by Hungarian groups, the Lausitz
culture and its neighbours, the tumulus-builders. Lausitz
"influence" is certainly patent in the use of typical
Lausitz ossuaries in Lower Austria and even far away
in the Tyrol. Some indeed would contend that it was
constitutive: the whole group would owe its rise and
specific character to an actual infusion of Lausitz folk,
perhaps as an organizing force bringing together other
communities. That certainly is a simple explanation,
perhaps too simple.
Yet in its general character the North Alpine culture
was very similar to the Lausitz, though richer and more
warlike. Its authors dwelt in log-cabins or pit-dwellings.
They walled off projecting spurs of the mountains (pro-
montory forts) or defended hill-tops, the walls in each case
being of stone and turf, strengthened with a palisade (98).
As elsewhere, these fortifications would be places of
refuge rather than permanent villages; the latter were
probably situated in the valleys. The miners of the
Tyrolese copper lodes and the rock-salt of Hallstatt,
whose methods have been sketched in an earlier chapter,
belonged to our North Alpine group. And the rich
cemetery of Hallstatt, that gives its name to the First
Iron Age in Central Europe, is an urnfield of the type
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 211
described below, though of later date. The long timbered
galleries, the shafts and ladders and other workings
which the visitor to Hallstatt may still admire are
apparently pure Bronze Age,
Cremation was of course the normal burial rite, and
an urn was deposited in every grave. Sometimes,
however, the ashes were laid outside it. The urn itself,
often very large, was globular or piriform, but always
provided with a cylindrical neck surmounted by a
projecting brim (Fig. 25, no. 3). It might serve as a
dolion containing the ossuary proper, generally a smaller
version of the same type. In the Tyrol the ossuaries*
rims are supported by twisted pillar-like handles (hence
the name " pillar urns"). The walls may be decorated
with warts and " false cord impressions'' obtained by
rolling a twisted ring over the soft clay. With such
cylinder-neck urns true Lausitz ossuaries are sometimes
encountered as noted above. The accessory vases —
jugs, dishes, and cups — are usually fine, often polished
with graphite and decorated with incised patterns,
flutings, or conical warts.
Typical implements are celts (axes and adzes) with
terminal wings and an ear (Fig. 3, no. 8), socketed
chisels and gouges, a wide variety of single-bladed
knives, grooved sickles, fish-hooks, and razors with an
openwork metal handle, at first with an irregular oval
blade slit at the end, later horse-shoe shaped (Fig. 12,
no. 7). The distinctive weapons are slashing swords
with richly engraved bronze hilts or with flanged tangs,
giving place later (Kraft E) to Hungarian, Morigen and
antennae types. In addition to swords the warrior used
spears with socketed heads, and bronze-tipped arrows.
A wealth of ornaments is found in these graves in
contrast to the poor Lausitz interments. The commonest
14-2
212 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
pins have large poppy, vase (Fig. 14, no. 1 i), turban or
bulb heads. Safety-pins of violin-bow type are found
sporadically in the Tyrol, and others with a wiry bow
twisted in figure 8's and terminating in a horizontal
spiral catch-plate, in Bavaria, Massive bracelets deco-
rated with ribs (Fig. 15, no. i) encircled the arms.
The girdle was fastened with disk-shaped clasps. On it
or on a necklace were hung pendants in the form of a
wheel as well as glass, amber, and gold beads and
spectacle-spirals of bronze wire. Gold disks ornamented
with rings of stamped circles have been found in some
graves and were doubtless solar symbols.
Finally vessels of beaten bronze occur even in the
earlier phase (Reinecke and Kraft D). The commonest
are cups decorated with embossed circles as in Italy.
But a contemporary barrow at Milave£ in Bohemia
contained a remarkable bronze bowl, shaped like the
usual cinerary urn but mounted on a little wheeled
car.
In art a revival of spiral decoration is to be observed
on sword hilts of phase D. But even then concentric
circles and arcs were commoner, and in phase E these
alone survive.
In addition to the solar symbolism of the pendants,
curious cult objects now meet us in the settlements.
These are made of clay in the form of a pair of horns and
very likely served as firedogs, the hearth being of course
a place of sanctity. None the less these objects are
derived in the last resort from the "Horns of Conse-
cration " that had played a prominent part in Minoan
cult from Early Minoan times till the collapse of the
Mycenaean culture.
The urnfields just described were in their earlier
phases concentrated in the valleys of the Upper Danube,
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 213
the Inn and the Isar. In the highlands on every side the
tumulus-builders lived on still. But they now practised
cremation regularly, though seldom, save in Bohemia,
enclosing the ashes in cinerary urns. Their pottery was
profoundly influenced by that of the urnfields, and most
of the bronze types just described might also be found
under barrows. The old bronze-studded wooden targe
was now at times replaced by a buckler of hammered
bronze. Unlike the British products, the Bohemian and
South German shields are definitely convex all over and
lack any distinct umbo. They were strengthened with
concentric ridges hammered up from the inner side and
were manipulated by a pair of small handles and one big
central handle (Fig. 30).
The North Alpine urnfield culture is of such import-
ance in British archaeology that its development during
the last phase of the Bronze Age (Kraft E, Reinecke
Hallstatt A) and into the Early Iron Age deserves a
rather more detailed examination. Two zones must be
distinguished. The inner zone, extending northward to
the Main with its core in Switzerland and Bavaria, was
nourished by the industry of the lake-dwellings and the
trade of the western amber route.
The Bronze Age lake-villages of Switzerland and
Upper Bavaria seem to result from the synoecism of
older pile-hamlets ( ioo) effected under the leadership of
the urnfield folk with the collaboration of the authors of
the Rh6ne culture and perhaps of immigrants from
Upper Italy (53). The new pile-villages, situated farther
from the present shore than their neolithic forerunners,
were regular industrial settlements. Individual villages
would even specialize in the manufacture of a particular
kind of article — for instance, armlets. Their manufactures
were exported to Hungary, Silesia and the North Sea.
214 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
In return, Danish bronzes and amber, Hungarian swords,
Villanovan horse-trappings and metal vessels flowed in.
Stimulated by the blended traditions of their compatriots
and by contact with foreign centres of industry, the
clever smiths devised original types of tool, weapon and
ornament.
Noteworthy among these are knives like Fig. 1 1 ,
no. 7, antennae and Morigen swords (Fig. 8, no. 10),
horse-shoe razors (Fig. 12, no, 7), pins with hollow
globular heads decorated with inlaid eyes, and great
hollow bracelets either closed and kidney-shaped (Nieren-
ringe) or with open splayed-out ends. More generalized
types of course occur. While socketed chisels and gouges
were quite the rule, winged celts with the wings near the
butt and a loop (Fig. 3, no. 8) were far commoner than
socketed celts. Bronze bits (Fig. 13, no. 7) were manu-
factured to control the horses though those with horn
cheek-pieces remained in use.
The fine black or grey pottery includes most urnfield
forms and, in addition, globular vessels with a narrow
out-turned rim, and tulip-shaped beakers with an almost
pointed base. Fluted decoration, fretwork, as in the
Tumulus culture, and very neat engraved patterns, often
curvilinear, adorned the vases. A rare technique was to
inlay the depression of the fretwork with tin. The latest
vases show the polychrome decoration of Hallstatt types
— stripes blackened with graphite on a ferruginous red
wash.
The art of the lake-dwellings (52) is characterized
above all by the minute exactness with which the linear
patterns were executed. The patterns themselves include
circles and semicircles but no spirals. Some pots, how-
ever, exhibit a sort of maeander in which the angles have
been rounded off. In this connection we may note, too,
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 215
rattles of animal form and the horn-shaped fire-dogs
already described.
The civilization of the lake-dwellings in Bavaria,
Switzerland and Savoy, begun already in Reinecke's
phase D of the Bronze Age, reached its zenith in the
succeeding phase but lasted into the Early Iron Age
(Reinecke's Hallstatt B). In that period invaders sacked
the villages, while a recurrence of moister climatic
conditions led to their final desertion. But by that time
urnfield folk, whose funerary pottery shows them to be
directly descended from the lake-dwellers, were settling
in Northern Spain.
The urnfield people from the Danube basin occupied
the valleys of the Rhine, the Neckar and the Main,
bringing in their train Swiss and Bavarian elements and
absorbing others from the native Tumulus groups. Thus
we find inhumations as well as cremations. Throughout
this area the essential features of the urnfield culture in
its later phase were well maintained, and Swiss bronzes
circulated freely. But directly we cross the Main or
the Saone we enter impoverished provincial regions
where archaic urnfield types persisted in a context that
transcends the limits of the pure Bronze Age. The urn-
field folk spread, that is, both into Holland and Central
France, but lost touch with the creative centre and
became economically isolated.
We have already described the gradual spread of the
Tumulus culture across Central France. Particularly
in Aube we have many burials of this class assignable to
phase D(4). But the tumulus-builders were followed
by urnfield folk. A cemetery of this type, discovered
at Pouges-les-Eaux, Ni£vre(io2), is the best available
evidence of this, though many sherds labelled "Sge
du bronze" in French museums indicate a wider
2l6 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
distribution for the culture. At Pouges, as on the Rhine,
inhumations occurred side by side with cremations. The
bronzes included two razors, one with openwork handle
of the type current on the Upper Danube in phase D,
the other flat-tanged like some Sicilian and all British
blades (Fig. 12, no. 10). The pots on the contrary look
rather like degenerate versions of the types current in
Switzerland during phase E (Hallstatt A), to which also
most of the pins could be assigned. It looks almost as
if a band of urnfield folk had clung tenaciously to some
types current in their homeland at the time of their
departure while adopting contemporary models in other
directions. At the same time the hoards doi) suggest that
South-eastern France was winning a certain independ-
ence of Central European traditions and was susceptible
to currents coming, not from the Danube or Upper
Italy, but from Sardinia and Sicily.
The phenomena observed on the Lower Rhine in
Belgium and Holland in other respects reproduce those
noticed in France. The urnfield folk spread thither
slowly and mixed with tumulus-builders. Urnfield types
of vases, all very degenerate, persisted well into the
Hallstatt period. Scarcely any bronzes are found in
graves, and hoards are inordinately rare. Still razors of
archaic form occur as in France.
THE LATE BRONZE AGE IN THE NORTH
The Teutonic craftsmen in Denmark, Sweden and
North Germany maintained the high standard of skill
achieved during the Middle Bronze Age. The austere
beauty of the earlier art was, however, sacrificed in the
more florid products of the later. In general, Teutonic
culture in the Late Bronze Age is only a richer autono-
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 217
mous development of that described in the last chapter.
Foreign influences were certainly absorbed, but without
causing any interruption in the tradition. The gjost
radical was seen in burial rites. Cremation rapjfoly
replaced inhumation. But even this change was by/tyo
means catastrophic. During the first half of the L"Ste
Bronze Age a barrow was still regularly erected over thSb
remains. The ashes were frequently deposited in hollowed^
tree-trunks, big enough for a complete skeleton, as in1
the preceding period. Urn-burial on the contrary was
at first exceptional. The rare ossuaries, however, are
generally related to the biconical Lausitz type, showing
the very strong influence from that culture that reached
the Baltic. Another, but certainly native, innovation
of the period was to construct round the grave the
outline of a ship in stone, a practice that clearly antici-
pates the burial rites of Viking times do3).
The Late Bronze Age of Scandinavia falls quite easily
into three phases, corresponding to Montelius' Periods
III, IV and V. The regular interchange of products with
the south makes it clear that these are parallel to Rei-
necke's Bronze D and Hallstatt A and B-C respectively.
The last phase of the Teutonic Bronze Age is therefore
contemporary with the full Iron Age in Southern
Germany and the Danube basin. North-eastern Ger-
many was becoming increasingly important during the
later phases, but during Montelius' V Teutonic culture
was also spreading westward to the Upper Rhine and
the Dutch coasts. Eventually, however, the brilliant
native development was arrested with the political and
industrial expansion of the Kelts late in the Iron Age.
A few characteristic Teutonic products may now be
briefly mentioned. Socketed celts were regularly used
throughout the age. At first they exhibited a ridge in
218 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
relief down the middle of either face reminiscent of the
projecting ends of the split knee-shaft between the
flanges of the Middle Bronze Age celt, but by Period IV
this motive had become purely conventional. At the
same time winged celts, like those of the North Alpine
area, were imported. The single-edged knives were
scarcely altered at first, but in Period V, when Swiss and
other southern types were imported, the native knife-
handles sprouted out into opposed scrolls like the pom-
mels of antennae swords. The horse's head handles of
the razors were becoming increasingly conventionalized
in Period III and gave way to swans' heads or pairs of
spirals in Period IV. To that period, too, belong blades
engraved with representations of the " solar barque"
(Fig. 12, no. 1 1).
The sword remained the warrior's principal weapon.
In Period III the hilt might still consist of alternate
bronze and amber disks, with a flat rhombic pommel;
in IV the plated tang predominates; while in V antennae,
Morigen, and true Hallstatt swords were imported or
even copied locally.
The contemporary ornaments all grew out of older
native types, showing that no material change affected
Teutonic dress. The most important pins were of course
the two-piece fibulae — in III with large flat spiral coils
as catch-plates that were replaced in V by large shield-
shaped plates (Fig. 14, no. 17). In the latter period there
was a revival of simple pins, those with spiral, sunflower
(like Fig. 14, no. 8) or saucer-shaped heads being most
popular. Another queer pin, to which Early Iron Age
deposits at Aegina and elsewhere in Greece offer
parallels, has a dumb-bell head formed by joining two
disks by a bar at right angles to the shaft. The handsome
bronze collars were still worn by ladies during Mon-
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 219
telius' III. In IV and V they were ousted by hooked
torques, some genuinely twisted, others with the torsion
imitated by cast ridges or engraved lines. In V the
direction of the torsion often alternates, one strip being
twisted to the right, the next to the left and so on
(Fig. 17, no. 6). Some torques are even hinged. Tutuli
assumed gigantic proportions. In Period III the central
spike had already grown into a veritable pillar sur-
mounted by a knob; by IV the disk may be 7 inches
across and the pillar rise 4^ inches from the rim; while
in V the ornament looks like a pedestalled goblet 6
inches or more across, richly decorated on its surface
and equipped with ingenious devices for attachment on
the inside (Fig. 17, no. 5).
Late Bronze Age pottery in the Teutonic province is
extremely dull. The only attempt at decoration was to
smear over the surface with the fingers or a stiff brush.
As already remarked, a biconical ossuary was in use
from Periods III to V. In the latter period ossuaries in
the form of round huts, much as in Latium, were also
being made, particularly in Eastern Germany.
The dullness of the pottery is counterbalanced and
explained by a wealth of bronze and gold vessels. Many
of the bronze cups, buckets and urns were obviously
imported from Italy, exhibiting the distinctive forms
and decorative devices of the Villanovan bronze industry.
But another group of vessels is no less of clearly native
manufacture. Among these are the so-called hanging
basins of bronze (they may really be grotesquely en-
larged tutuli) of Periods IV— V. They have rounded or
conical bases, a narrow almost horizontal shoulder and
a short vertical neck from which grow two low handles
(Fig. 1 7, no. 4). The base and neck are richly engraved.
No less remarkable is the great group of gold vessels,
220 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
perhaps mainly ritual, assigned to Period IV. They are
ornamented with zones of repouss£ concentric circles
separated by ribbed ridges . In the case of round-bottomed
vessels the circles may form a star radiating from the
base, or such a star may be left reserved, the space
between the points being filled with bosses or circles.
The commonest form is a round-bottomed cup without
handles. Two remarkable gold vases in the form of a
very high-crowned hat, though found respectively in
the Rhenish Palatinate and in Central France, seem
in style to belong to the Teutonic group.
The gold of these vessels is so thin that many believe
them to have been used in ritual only, A number come
from bogs where they might have been cast as offerings
to some chthonic divinity. And we certainly possess
ritual objects of the Late Bronze Age that must have
been disposed of in that way, a usage indicated much
later in the Norse sagas. The most famous and un-
ambiguous is a bronze horse on wheels (2) connected
with a gold-plated1 disk also on wheels. The disk is
6 inches in diameter. The whole object stands for the
solar chariot; after use in some pagan ceremony it had
been ritually slain (broken) and cast into the moss of
Trundholm in Zealand. The same order of ideas doubt-
less sanctified some little gold boats found in another
Danish bog. The wheeled bowls of Sweden and Meck-
lenburg, like that from Milave£ in Bohemia, may equally
rank as ritual vessels. The boat symbol, combined often
with swans' heads, recurs again engraved on razor-
blades.
The art of the Late Bronze Age is on the whole
inferior to that of the preceding epoch. The spiral
survives on collars of Period III and grows into a variety
1 Not of course by electrolysis, but by coating with gold foil.
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 221
of scroll patterns in V (Fig. 1 7, nos. 4, 5). But the purely
geometric principle was being already abandoned, the
scrolls blossoming out into stylized animals' heads. To
the same period belong undoubtedly some of the rock-
carvings and ornamented tombs. Even the Kivik grave
is assigned by some authorities to the Late rather than
the Middle Bronze Age.
In this connection we may refer to the so-called lurer^
musical instruments indirectly related to the trumpets
depicted on the Kivik monument. Some thirty of these
instruments have been found, generally in Scandinavia
and North Germany, all belonging it seems to Periods
III— V. They consist of composite bronze tubes with
a total length of as much as 5 feet, but wound in a curious
S form. The sectional tubes of which they are composed
have been cleverly united either by casting on or
sweating on or by elaborate interlocking joints. The
lurer each had a range of eight notes and are generally
found in pairs, each tuned to a different pitch (Fig. 29).
HUNGARY AND RUSSIA
The Late Bronze Age on the Middle Danube is
particularly complicated owing to extensive tribal move-
ments. West of the river in Styria, Carinthia and
Slovenia, iron came into use very early among Bronze
Age groups of indeterminate antecedents, some showing
relations with the Hungarian and North Alpine urn-
field folks, others with tumulus-builders. In the moun-
tains of Bosnia groups of barrows, covering inhumation
interments accompanied by bracelets, pins and tutuli
characteristic of the (northern) Tumulus culture together
with a few fibulae of Adriatic form, constitute the nuclei
of the well-known Iron Age cemeteries of Glasinac.
222 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
East of the Danube, on the other hand, a belated Bronze
Age continued till iron was introduced by bands of
Scyths pushing westward across South Russia towards
500 B.C., and by Kelts advancing in the opposite
direction rather later.
The Late Bronze Age throughout the region was
ushered in by an invasion of people related to the
Lausitz and Knoviz groups who settled especially round
the copper-bearing regions of Northern Hungary and
Slovakia*^). Their distinctive pottery, fluted like the later
Lausitz vases, enables us to trace them farther south
and indeed right across the Balkans into Macedonia;
there they put an end to the Late Mycenaean colonies
as indicated in Chapter i. Everywhere they introduced
the socketed celt, swords with plated hilts, and spear-
heads with lanceolate blades. In North Hungary the
socketed celt almost completely displaced the practical
shaft-hole axe that had previously been manufactured
in the regions. In Transylvania, however, elaborate
derivatives of the old types were still made.
In Northern Hungary the fusion of the invaders
with older inhabitants produced a very flourishing
culture. It is illustrated by extensive urnfields, remains
of regular industrial villages and rich traders' hoards
and " foundries ". Among distinctive local types are
slashing swords with rich spiral ornamentation engraved
on the bronze hilts, and a variety of elaborate fibulae
with big spiral catch-plates. An exceptional number of
bronze buckets and cauldrons (Fig. 27, nos. 2, 3) and
cups of gold or bronze have been discovered in this area,
principally on its fringe on the plains of the Upper Tisza.
That was evidently a dangerous tract on a great trade
route leading from the head of the Adriatic diagonally
across Hungary to the Upper Tisza and so to the gold,
THE LATE BRONZE AGE
223
Fig. 27. Bronze vessels.
(1) Gold cup from hoard of Unter-Glauheim, Bavaria.
(2) Bronze cauldron with T handles, same hoard. J
(3) Bronze bucket with birds* heads, same hoard. }
(4) Bronze cauldron, West Scotland (after Anderson). £
224 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
copper and salt deposits of Transylvania. The metal
vessels are all of forms current in Italy and decorated
with repouss£ bosses in Villanovan style; the buckets
even show the bird's head and circle motive in its
classical North Italian form. Yet the exceptional number
of the metal vessels and the use of presumably native
gold in the manufacture of many suggest that some
at least must be local products. Their distribution
elsewhere, too, is not very different from that of the
undoubtedly Hungarian swords just described.
Between the ninth and seventh centuries, too, South
Russia at last entered the orbit of the European economic
and industrial system for a short time. Particularly in
the Ukraine (105) a local bronze industry arose, inspired
mainly by Hungarian and Central European models.
But here the western types subsist side by side with
developments of native "Copper Age" forms. Thus
socketed celts are found together with peculiar flat celts.
Out of this mixture some interesting varieties were
evolved. We may mention a socketed celt with two
ears, a type which spread across Eastern Russia to the
head-waters of the Jenessei in Siberiado6>, and socketed
spear-heads with big semicircular slits in the blades that
must be related to contemporary British types. In the
Ukraine they must be pre-Scythian (seventh to fifth
centuries or earlier); farther north they belong to the
local Iron Age. Yet side by side with these we have
tanged spear-heads of Asiatic ancestry and others with
folded socket as in Crete. To the same period belong the
sickles with a hooked tang.
GREAT BRITAIN
We have already seen that Urn field cultures, more or
less, connected with the North Alpine group were
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 225
spreading in a westerly direction across Central France
from Switzerland or the Upper Rhine and down the
Rhine into Belgium and Holland. The latter current was
further reinforced by one originating in northern
Central Germany. Ultimately these movements im-
pinged upon the coasts of Britain and represent the
so-called invasion with which our Late Bronze Age may
be said to open (107). Actually this " invasion" was a
complex process effected by the infiltration of discrete
bands of invaders (76) — in this probably resembling the
earlier phases of the "Anglo-Saxon Conquest ", No
doubt the invaders started from various centres and
landed at diverse points along our coasts. Some certainly
followed the precedent of the Beaker folk and crossed
the North Sea from the Low Countries. Others may
have come across France to the Channel ports, and a
group that appears in Cornwall and Devon had Armori-
can affinities. The cumulative result was that "Lowland
England " was dominated by the invaders, while in the
highland country to the north and west the intrusive
culture was absorbed in strict conformity with the
principle recently enunciated by Fox (71). In the south
therefore exotic ceramic types were extensively manu-
factured, while to the north the Late Bronze Age pottery
is directly descended from Middle Bronze Age wares.
Nevertheless the changes in economic arrangements and
burial rites, presumably introduced by the invaders,
affected every part of the island, and their new tools and
weapons were distributed evenly throughout the land.
Conversely, even in Southern England the native tradi-
tion in pottery and bronze work was never entirely
interrupted.
Hence in general the invasions produced no radical
or abrupt change in economy and industry. Probably
CBA
226 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
the communities, in the lowlands especially, were larger,
more agricultural and more settled than before. In
Southern England a number of roughly rectangular
earthworks defended by ditch and bankdog) can safely
be assigned to this period and give evidence of more or
less permanent settlement. In this area the people lived
in pit-dwellings excavated in the chalk. Air photographs,
supplemented by excavation, have also demonstrated
that some of the old cultivations known as ' ' Keltic fields ' '
likewise date from the Late Bronze AgedoS). Broad
rectangular fields, varying in size from 100 sq. feet to
400 by 1 50 sq. feet, were cultivated with the aid of a
foot-plough (such as was recently used in the Hebrides)
or a primitive plough drawn by two oxen that did not
undercut the sods, on the slopes of the open downs and
uplands. Between each field narrow strips were left
uncultivated (80). Owing to the slope of the land, soil
was washed down from the upper edge of the field and
gradually accumulated in a little straight bank against
the uncultivated strip at its bottom. The low ridge thus
formed is known as a (positive) lynchet, and it is a study
of the relation of such lynchets to earthworks of the
Late Bronze Age that enables us to date the cultivations.
The formation of a lynchet clearly implies a considerable
period of cultivation, confirming the impression of
sedentary life produced by the settlements. In upland
Britain, moreover, a number of very substantial round
huts of stone, on Dartmoor and in Anglesey for instance,
certainly go back at least to the Late Bronze Age,
carrying on an early native architectural tradition. Even
villages with elaborate stone defences, like Grimspound
on Dartmoor, may be Late Bronze Age (78). Both these
solid huts and the fine stone defences are incom-
patible with a semi-nomadic life, though not implying
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 227
necessarily that extreme fixity attained by our peasantry
since the Saxon conquest.
More permanent occupation is likewise indicated by
the adoption of burial in urnfields in place of, or besides,
in small groups of barrows. Urnfields comparable to
those of the Lausitz folk or the Italici are in fact
distinctive of the Late Bronze Age not only in Southern
England but even in the lowlands of Scotland as far
north as Aberdeen. Very often, however, an old barrow
was used for secondary interments in the Late Bronze
Age, a practice also noticed in Holland and Scandinavia.
A change in the economic organization of Great
Britain is denoted by the " founders' hoards " that appear
for the first time in this period(ss). They imply a new
class of travelling smiths, agents or pupils of the great
founders of Bologna. Exotic types whose previous
history is to be sought in Central Europe, such as
winged and socketed celts, leaf-shaped swords with
plated hilts, and bugle-shaped objects from harness (107),
are specially common in these hoards and again illustrate
foreign traditions as well as actual imports. Trade
relations with the lands beyond the Channel and the
North Sea had naturally been cemented by the move-
ments of peoples from those quarters. But the old traffic
along the sea routes to Spain and the Western Mediter-
ranean was revived at the same time, and Britain thus
participated in the intensified maritime trade of the
Mediterranean basin suggested at the beginning of the
chapter, A spear-head of British type (almost identical
with Fig. 10, no. 6) was included in a " hoard" dredged
up from the harbour of Huelva in Southern Spain (92),
and socketed sickles occur even in Sardinia. At the
same time, as in the later Stone Age, the maritime
trade route was continued round the west coasts of
15-2
228 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
Scotland presumably to Scandinavia. It is marked by
a series of late hoards on Islay, Skye, the Hebrides
and Orkney(6o>. By this route presumably Scandinavian
types, such as the sunflower pin, reached Ireland and
England.
The British bronze industry of this period is repre-
sented only by hoards and isolated objects. Except for
razors and a few ornaments, no metal objects are found
in the graves. For axe-heads the later palstaves with no
indication of flanges below the stop-ridge remained in
use side by side with socketed celts and rare winged
celts with high-placed wings and an ear. Numerous
wood-workers' tools testify to the revival of carpentry,
of whose products unhappily no remains survive. To
this class belong the socketed gouges, tanged chisels
and curved knives (Fig. n, no. 10). Socketed chisels
and socketed hammers probably belong rather to the
equipment of the metal-worker. Original products of
the native industry are the socketed sickles and socketed
double-edged knives (Fig. n, no. 9). This is also the
great age of the bifid razors (Fig. 12, no. 10). Such are
found even in graves and settlements.
The slashing sword now became the warrior's princi-
pal weapon. Most have flanged tangs originally plated
with horn or wood, straight shoulders and a blunted
strip (ricassd) ending in a nick at the base of each edge.
A few are of true Hallstatt pattern, widened out for the
pommel like Fig. 8, no. 12. Bronze-hiked swords are
rare. Apart from an antennae sword found at Lincoln (a)
these bear little resemblance to Central European models,
but find rather distant parallels in Sweden. The wooden
sheaths that held these swords normally terminated
in long narrow chapes (Fig. 9, no. 2). Some, however,
were fitted with true winged chapes of Hallstatt form
THE LATE BRONZE AGE
229
Fig. 28. Bronze shield, Scotland, Late Bronze Age. After Anderson.
230 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
(Fig, 9, no. 3). The spear, too, retained its importance.
The commonest type has a leaf-shaped head, but blades
with lunate openings on either side of the midrib (Fig.
10, no. 6) are native British products derived from older
local models.
The warrior was now defended, as in Central Europe,
with a round buckler of bronze. The commonest native
type exhibits a hollow central boss or umbo encircled by
concentric ridges alternating with rings of small bosses.
A flat strip of metal, doubled over at the edges, was
riveted across the umbo to form a handle (Fig. 28).
Though no wheeled vehicles have come down to us,
such were certainly in use. Indeed one domestic hoard,
found in the cave of Heathery Burn (Durham) (2),
included six bronze cylinders with an internal diameter
of 4 inches which are supposed to be nave collars. The
horses which drew the vehicle were controlled by bits
terminating in antler cheek-pieces just like Central
European specimens. A remarkable gold peytrel (collar
or brunt) found at Mold (Flintshire) (2), if really Bronze
Age at all — and its decoration is of Bronze Age style —
shows how richly steeds might be caparisoned. The
so-called bugle-shaped objects — tubes with a solid loop
on one side and a slit on the other (Fig. 13, no. 5) — are
probably pieces of harness.
No safety-pins were included among the toilet articles
of a Late Bronze Age Briton. Even pins were still rare,
except for the sunflower type (Fig. 14, no. 8). On the
other hand, bronze buttons with a loop at the back now
supplement the buttons of jet or amber as dress-fasteners.
From Ireland come a number of small penannular
objects of gold terminating in great cup-like disks. Some
authorities think that they too were dress-fasteners (a) . A
thread would have replaced the movable pin of the
THE LATE BRONZE AGE
contemporary Teutonic fibulae to which the Irish orna-
ments in other respects bear a very striking resemblance
(Fig. 1 7, no. 8). Other gold objects of similar forms but
with a larger hoop might be worn as bracelets (Fig. 15,
no, 2). Sir John Evans (s) pointed out the extraordinary
resemblance these bear to the so-called manillas — the
ring money^ still current in West Africa in his day. If
may then He that these Irish gold objects were really
currency. The use of identically shaped " money " in
West Africa would be a survival from prehistoric times
commemorating our Bronze Age trade along the Atlantic
coasts.
Gold torques also continued in use as did probably the
segmented, quoit-shaped and star-shaped beads of
faience, and others of amber and jet. In late Scottish
hoards (6o> we find beads of blue glass with yellow or
white inlays such as would be more at home in the
Second Iron Age or La T&ne period.
Buckets and cauldrons of hammered bronze are
included in several hoards, and, judging by the Heathery
Burn cave (2), were in regular use for domestic purposes
by well-to-do families. The buckets are of Italian pattern
and may well be imported thence. Their models in any
case are not older than Benacci II times. The bottom on
some British specimens has been strengthened externally
by the attachment of a cruciform framework. The
cauldrons, on the other hand, are purely British though
late in date and probably inspired in the last resort by
Italian models. The majority come from Scotland and
Ireland, and some are actually associated with iron
weapons. They are globular in shape and consist of
several bronze plates riveted together and hammered
over a hoop that gave stability to the mouth. The
elaborate attachments for the loose ring handles have
232 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
been cast on (Fig. 27, no. 4). The great hoard of bronzes
from Dowris in County Meath and that from Dudding-
ston Loch, Edinburgh, were probably contained in such
cauldrons.
The Dowris hoard contained also trumpets of types
found elsewhere in Great Britain and Ireland. All are
much shorter than the Teutonic lurer and lack their
distinctive twists. The Dowris types were cast in one
piece; some have the mouthpiece at the end, others at
the side. A third variety, formed of sheet metal bent
over and riveted to form a tube, may date from the Iron
Age. In the Irish trumpets, as in the Teutonic lurer,
the derivation from an original animal's-horn instrument
is patent (Fig. 31).
The best known pottery of the Late Bronze Age is
sepulchral and consists of cinerary urns. These naturally
fall into two main classes — those derived from old
native forms and those inspired by exotic traditions.
The degeneration of the overhanging-rim urn pro-
duced, as we saw in Chapter vi, the cordoned or hooped
type (Fig. 24, no. 3). In it one ridge of pinched-up
clay represents the lower edge of the rim and another
below it the old line of the shoulder. This type is
commonest north of the Thames, in Wales and in Ire-
land. Dr Clay (no) believes that in the south of England a
similar process led to the formation of what Abercromby
calls the Deverel group 2. The urn of this group is
cylindrical or bucket-shaped and has a single moulding
encircling the body a couple of inches below the lip (Fig.
24, no. 4). This moulding can be treated as a survival
of the original overhanging rim. It is, however,
generally decorated with finger-tip impressions, a
technique which at once relates it to certain foreign
types of urn with which the Deverel group 2 is often
Fig-. 29. Tourer -
JDenmark:.
234 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
associated. A third native type of urn is that termed by
Abercromby "Encrusted". It develops out of the
enlarged food vessel in Northern England and South-
ern Scotland and spreads thence to Wales and Ireland d«) .
These urns were decorated by applying round pellets or
strips of clay to the surface while the vessel was drying
and arranging them to form simple patterns — chevrons,
squares, concentric arcs or interlaced mouldings. The
applied clay was carefully joined up to the body by
rubbing with a wet finger, but none the less the strips
easily fall off. The strips and even the spaces between
them are often incised with a bone point, but never
exhibit finger-tip impressions (Fig. 24, no. 5).
Over against these native types, which except for the
bucket urns all belong to highland Britain, stands the
foreign pottery of invaders as represented in Southern
England including Cornwall. The most striking are
the globular urns constituting Abercromby's Deverel
group I. The body is globular with four little handles
on the line of greatest swell. There is no clearly marked
neck, but where it should be comes the decoration,
consisting generally of horizontal flutings, simple hori-
zontal incisions, or bands of wavy lines made with a
sort of comb (Fig. 24, no. 8). Abercromby rightly noted
the similarity of the fluted decoration to that on the
urnfield pottery of Central Europe and France.
Abercromby *s Type 3, groups 2 and 3, consist of tall
bucket-shaped or cyclindrical urns decorated with hori-
zontal, vertical or zig-zag mouldings. The mouldings
are normally embellished with finger-tip impressions
and, in group 2, often form loops suggestive of handles
(Fig. 24, no. 6). The rim is generally slightly everted
in a manner reminiscent of metal vessels. Plastic finger-
tip mouldings had been used decoratively along the
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 235
northern shores of the Mediterranean and in Central
Europe from Neolithic times. From Italy to Holland
they are quite common in the urnfield period. This
feature therefore helps to attach the group in question
to continental cultures without giving us any clue as to
the exact home of its makers.
The third intrusive ceramic type is commonest in
Cornwall. It is a slightly biconical urn, the upper cone
being much shorter than the lower. Two or four strap
handles sit on the keel. The upper part and shoulder is
decorated with vertical or horizontal zig-zags, some-
times formed by the impression of a cord (Fig. 24, no. 7).
The patterns are thus very similar to those of the Middle
Bronze Age overhanging rim urns. But the forms of our
group are undoubtedly strongly reminiscent of the Ar-
morican urns of an earlier date described in Chapter v.
One peculiar feature is common to all the three
classes of jntrusive pottery. On the base of the urn
there is often a cross or star in relief on the inside. It
has been suggested that these relief patterns were really
structural and served to strengthen the base. They
would actually be useful if the pot was used for boiling
water by dropping in hot stones, and several of the
decorated pots came from settlements. Another possi-
bility is that the ridges imitate the stays used to strengthen
metal buckets, but these were generally affixed to the
outside. Dr Clay regards the crosses and stars as
religious symbols. Indeed in some Hungarian urn-
fields a swastika has been observed in relief inside urns.
A word must be said in conclusion as to the duration
of the Late Bronze Age in the British Isles. Quite
obviously it everywhere overlaps the Central European
Hallstatt period very considerably; the Hallstatt types
from our hoards suffice to prove that. Moreover, until
236 THE LATE BRONZE AGE
recently no connected settlements or cemeteries other
than those of the Late Bronze Age were known that
could be assigned to the First Iron Age. It was only in
the Second or La T&ne period that new groups could
be identified. In the last few years it has been proved
that people with a very late Hallstatt culture, including
distinctive pottery, did settle on our shores notably at
Park Browdia) near Cissbury in Sussex, at All Cannings
Cross (ii i) near Devizes in Wiltshire and at Scarborough.
But though these new-comers did use pottery of Hall-
statt character, their safety-pins were already of La T&ne
type, i.e., though they brought a culture of Hallstatt
ancestry, they and it only arrived in La T&ne times so
that their coming need not be anterior to 450 B.C.
Moreover, the intrusive wares at All Cannings and
elsewhere are associated with Bronze Age urn types (no)
so that even in Southern England the survival of our
Bronze Age culture throughout the whole of the Hall-
statt period of Central Europe seems indisputable. In
more inaccessible regions it lasted longer still. That is
implied in the late associations of the Irish and Scottish
cauldrons. The glass beads from the hoard of bronzes
on Lewis and from a cordoned urn at Edderton, Ross-
shire, both point to a survival well into the Second Iron
Age. And in one urn of Bronze Age fabric from
Cornwall Roman coins of the fourth century A.D. have
been recorded 1 On the whole, then, the Bronze Age in
Southern England must have lasted till about 400 B.C.
and elsewhere till at least 200 B.C., probably to the
beginning of our era in Scotland,
The beginning of the Late Bronze Age is less easily
determined. The intrusive types with which it opens
need none of them be later than Reinecke's Hallstatt A.
But if they reached here not by trade but as the results
THE LATE BRONZE AGE 237
of ethnic movement, they might have been already out
of date on the Danube before they reached the Thames,
just as our Hallstatt pottery would have been already
superseded by La T6ne wares on the Rhine before it was
used at All Cannings. On the contrary, the Sicilian
safety-pins associated with the British spear-head at
Huelva imply that such Late Bronze Age types were
current here before 900 B.C. So perhaps a date of about
1000 for the first invasions would not be much too high.
Fig. 30. Bronze shield, Bohemia.
CHAPTER VII
RACES
IN the last three chapters we have given a rather cur-
sory account of the culture of the principal com-
munities living north of the Alps between 2000 and
500 B.C. The description of our ancestors' life in Britain
towards the latter date is rather an anti-climax after the
brilliant civilizations of Sumer, Egypt and Crete with
which we started. It is salutary, if depressing, to com-
pare the hovels, dug in the chalk of the Wiltshire downs
or built of rubble on Dartmoor, with the great cities of
Kish and Harappa that are already two thousand five
hundred years older. A single tomb on the acropolis of
Mycenae contained more gold than has been collected
from thousands of British barrows ranging over fifteen
hundred years. And the Mycenaean tombs were
poverty-stricken in comparison with the Royal Graves
of Ur that are fifteen hundred years earlier. A Middle
Minoan II rapier is a foot longer than the finest bronze
blade forged north of the Alps. And yet the Bronze Age
barbarians had no lack of armourers.
In fact, the northerners were quick to learn and
adapt to their peculiar needs those discoveries of the
Ancient East that appealed to barbarian requirements.
But the techniques and models were in every case
supplied by Sumerians, Egyptians, or Minoans. In our
period it is not possible to point to a single vital contri-
bution to material culture originating in Europe outside
the Aegean area.
And, if it be argued that this poverty in material
culture was counterbalanced by an inherent spiritual
superiority, we can point to the cannibal feasts of the
Knovfz peoples and the human sacrifices depicted on
RACES 239
the Kivik tombstone. Certainly Bronze Age burials
suggest a monogamous family and a high status for
women. But, after all, few Orientals could actually
afford a harem, and the queens of Egypt were buried
with sufficient pomp. It would be just silly to say that
Scandinavian decorative art was superior to Babylonian
or Minoan. And no one in their senses will compare the
Swedish rock-carvings with even a poor Egyptian bas-
relief or the Trondholm horse with a Sumerian bull of
3000 B.C.
No, it is not with their civilized contemporaries in
the Eastern Mediterranean that our Bronze Age ances-
tors must be compared but with the more backward
communities of Africa and Malaysia to-day.
Nevertheless the roots of modern European civiliza-
tion were struck down deep into this unpromising soil.
The general economic and social structure that may be
inferred from the Late Bronze Age remains persisted
with surprisingly superficial modifications throughout
the Roman Period in many parts of the Empire. The
native houses and fields of Roman Britain did not differ
essentially from those of the latest Bronze Age. And
after all the direct ancestors of the Romans themselves
prior to the rule of the Etruscan kings had been just an
Urnfield folk comparable to the inhabitants of the Lausitz
and the Alpine slopes. Even in the British Isles many
elements of pure Bronze Age culture survived un-
changed by subsequent migrations and invasions till
late in last century. For example, travellers describe
beehive huts of stone and a foot-plough, exactly like
those known directly or inferred in Bronze Age Britain,
as still current in the Hebrides. Despite the upheavals
of the Early Iron Age and the Migration Period one is
inclined to believe in a considerable continuity both in
240 RACES
blood and tradition between the Bronze Age and the
modern populations.
Furthermore, the earliest historical data imply that
the principal European nations of antiquity must already
have existed, either as distinct peoples or at least as
groups in course of formation, before the close of our
period. It should, therefore, theoretically, be possible
to attach to our main Bronze Age groups ethnic labels,
derived from the classical authors. Such an attempt is,
however, rendered hazardous in practice both by the
extensive and complicated popular movements that took
place during the Early Iron Age and also by the
ambiguous use of ethnic terms by the Greeks and
Romans. It is well to close this book with some account
of recent speculations in this direction, but the results
up to date are frankly disappointing.
The " ethnic " groups considered in this search almost
inevitably become confused with the linguistic groups
distinguished by comparative philologists. Language
is certainly a cultural, rather than a racial, trait and one of
those unifying factors that give to a single people that
unity which might find outward expression in a " cul-
ture " (as defined on p. 42). The equation of language
and culture can, however, only possess a restricted
validity. In so far as it is applicable, it gives us a means
of supplementing the somewhat vague testimony of
ancient writers; for place-names often define very
accurately the former distribution of a group or people.
A comparison of the distribution of place-names of a
given type with that of archaeological remains has
yielded good fruit already. This line of research will, I
believe, if the complicated problems of the Iron Age are
concomitantly unravelled, lead to the ultimate solution
of our questions.
RACES 24!
It is generally believed that, with the exception of the
Mediterranean basin and some corners in the extreme
North and West, Europe was occupied by peoples of
Indo-European (or Aryan) speech (the great linguistic
family to which all modern European languages, except
Basque, Magyar, Turkish and Finnish, and also Arme-
nian, Persian and Hindu belong) by the beginning of
the Bronze Age. In the Mediterranean basin place-
names indicate a much longer survival of a predominantly
pre-Aryan population. In the Aegean these would be
Leleges and Carians of Anatolian affinities, in Sicily and
South Italy, Sicels, and in Spain Iberian tribes whose
language survives perhaps as Basque. Beyond the
borders of the European economic system to the north-
east dwelt perhaps already Lapps and Finns, while it is
still open to dispute whether some early peoples in the
British Isles, such as the mysterious Picts, belonged to
our linguistic ancestry at all. For the rest, Aryan
languages must have been in general use. It should
therefore be possible to connect the several Bronze Age
cultures with branches of the Indo-European linguistic
family — the Teutons, Kelts, Italic!, Hellenes, Illyrians,
Thraco-Phrygians, and Slavs of the philologist.
In the case of the Teutons1 alone is there any
considerable approach to unanimity. The bronze culture
of Scandinavia and North Germany is continuous with
the demonstrably Teutonic culture of the Roman period.
We have even seen that Teutonic cult practices can be
traced far back in the local Bronze Age. Though
1 Teutonic is the English term used to denote the whole group of
allied languages comprising Anglo-Saxon, Dutch, German, the Scan-
dinavian tongues and ancient Gothic. In Germany the term Germanic
is used as by Tacitus. Gothonic has recently been suggested as an
alternative by a Dane, Schtltte (Our Forefathers, Cambridge, 1929).
242 RACES
Scandinavia and North Germany were subjected to
strong "influence" from the Lausitz area in the Late
Bronze Age and even stronger from the Kelts in the
Iron Age, there are no grounds for connecting these
foreign influences with a racial or even linguistic change.
The only serious problem is the attribution of certain
cultures in Eastern Germany which begin in the closing
years of the Bronze Age. Kossinna has dubbed them
" East Germanic ' ', but the researches of one of his pupils,
Petersen, have shown that they disappear from the area
in question altogether before the historical Goths are
traceable there. An identification with the Bastarnae
has been suggested, but rigorous proof is still lacking.
On the origin of the Kelts opinions seem at first
hopelessly divided. The issue is complicated by un-
certainty as to the antiquity and significance to be
attributed to the linguistic division into Brythonic and
Goidelic Kelts. The division rests principally on the
treatment of the Indo-European guttural qu which is
represented as a labial, p, in Brythonic (e.g. Welsh pump
for Latin quinque) while it is preserved as a guttural, c,
in Goidelic (Gaelic coic). Brythonic survives to-day in
Welsh and Cornish and in shepherds' "counts" else-
where in England, even in Lincolnshire. In Roman
times it was spoken by the Britons and most Gauls. Erse
and Scots Gaelic, introduced presumably by the Scotti
who crossed over from Ireland in post-Roman times,
alone illustrate the Goidelic speech, although there are
traces of the same branch in the Seine valley (32),
It is quite certain that the La T&ne culture of the
Second Iron Age (from about 450 B.C.) was created by
Kelts and carried by them to Britain and Ireland and
eastward far across Central Europe. It is less certain
among which group of the Hallstatt period the La Tfcne
RACES 243
culture arose and whether there were already Kelts
outside the cradle possessing a different culture. On
the second question at least Great Britain and Ireland
might be expected to afford conclusive evidence. Lord
Abercromby boldly suggested that the round-headed
Beaker-folk spoke proto-Keltic, still preserving the q
sound, as in Goidelic. That would agree very well with
the views of Professor Kossinna who ascribes the Tumu-
lus culture of South-west Germany, that is clearly
related to that of our round barrows, to Kelts. Un-
fortunately as far as Britain is concerned there is no
trace of Q-Keltic speech, and Ireland was not reached
by the Beaker-folk. At the same time the recognition of
a quite extensive infiltration in Late Bronze Age times
has greatly complicated the position. If two waves of
Kelts are required in Britain, the Urnfield folk have as
good a claim to be the first as their round-barrow-
building precursors. Correspondingly other Germans
like Dr Rademacher of Cologne have modified Kos-
sinna's theory by making an admixture of Urnfield folk
with the tumulus-builders a condition for their becoming
Kelts proper.
Still more recent researches have resulted in connect-
ing the oldest strata of Keltic place-names in North Spain
with a group of Urnfield folk, culturally descended from
the Late Bronze Age lake-dwellers of Switzerland and
Savoy. It is thus possible to assert with some confidence
that these latter were already Keltic. It is not thereby
determined whether they were the sole Kelts nor what
element in their complex ancestry — Urnfield folk from
the East, authors of Rhone culture and perhaps tumulus-
builders — made their speech Keltic. The association of
Urnfield folk in Britain with the system of agriculture
practised there throughout the Keltic period on the one
244 RACES
hand and the linguistic affinity between Kelts and
Italici, who were also Urnfield folk, on the other, would
encourage an identification of Kelts and North Alpine
Urnfield people. The chief obstacle to such an identifi-
cation is the desire to connect the North Alpine culture
with Illyrians which is mentioned below.
The position of the Italici is less difficult. There are
very strong grounds for connecting the terramaricoli
with the Latini at least, and so with the Romans.
Professor Pigorini and his disciples go further, and
regard the terramaricoli as ancestors also of the Umbrians
and Oscans, peoples who like Brythonic Kelts changed
Q to P. There is indeed an almost overwhelming case
for regarding the Villanovans as Umbrians. And
Professors Pigorini and Collini have argued strongly
for a derivation of the Villanovans from the terramaricoli.
Randall-Maclver would, on the other hand, invoke a
second invasion from an undefined district in Central
Europe to explain the Villanovans — a, to me, gratuitous
assumption. But quite apart from this, links between
the Oscans and either the Villanovans or terramaricoli
are not as yet obvious. In particular the Oscans seem
to have practised inhumation. Von Duhn therefore has
recently propounded a theory of an invasion by "in-
huming Italici" who would have occupied both Umbria
and the Oscan territory — a theory at the moment very
difficult of acceptance. Personally I regard Pigorini's
identification of the terramaricoli with the ancestors of
Latins, Umbrians and Oscans alike as the most economi-
cal and plausible theory.
The ancient writers often mention the Illyrians as a
great nation occupying the West Balkan highlands and
parts of the Danube valley. The modern Albanians are
the sole survivors of this linguistic stock. The greater
RACES 245
part of the Illyrian territory was occupied until the
Roman conquest by tumulus-builders directly descended
from the Late Bronze Age group who had settled at
Glasinac in Bosnia. A group of tumuli in Southern
Italy can equally be identified safely with the Illyrian
lapyges. The tumulus-builders practised inhumation
even in the First Iron Age when elsewhere cremation
predominated. On the other hand, at the head of the
Adriatic the Veneti, who are supposed to be of Illyrian
speech, were Urnfield folk. This seems the sole archaeo-
logical argument in favour of attributing to the Illyrians
the Lausitz and even the North Alpine Urnfield culture
— a theory that holds indisputed sway in Germany
to-day. From the point of view of toponymy the
doctrine is supported especially by the distribution of
names containing the allegedly Illyrian word for salt
*hal) in places where the Lausitz culture or its influence
is discernible — Hallstatt, Hallein, Reichenhall, Halle,
Halicz (in Galicia).
Against this it may reasonably be argued that we have
in the regions in question during Late Hallstatt times
intrusive inhumation graves whose furniture suggests
derivation from the south-eastern slopes of the Alps.
These inhumationists may have been responsible for
the introduction of the Illyrian names in question.
The Thracians have a much stronger claim to the
Lausitz culture. Though their centres were in the East
Balkans and Hungary, a Thracian or Dacian tribe was
to be found on the Lower Vistula as late as A.D. 1 80 and
left perfectly good Dacian place-names in Poland and
Silesia. To them at any rate must be ascribed the
Pannonian urnfields of the latest Bronze Age in Hun-
gary and Transylvania to which the Lausitz cemeteries
are more or less allied. The Late Bronze Age culture of
246 RACES
this Tisza district, subsequently overlaid by elements
contributed by Scythians and Kelts, seems to be more
or less continuous with the historical civilization of the
Thracians of Dacia. It was also, earlier at least,
connected with the Bronze Age culture of Macedonia
and intrusive, perhaps Phrygian, elements in Asia Minor
(Troy VII and perhaps earlier) (37). Its attribution
to Thracians seems then certain.
As for the Lausitz culture, a third claimant is to be
found among the Slavs, The case for a Slavonic attri-
bution of the Lausitz urnfields has been strongly urged
recently by several Polish scholars following in the steps
of the Czech archaeologist, Pic. The continuity has not,
however, yet been entirely demonstrated, and one
suspects that political considerations are influencing
their championship of this theory as they are the strenuous
opposition of all German investigators. Still, otherwise
no Slavonic nuclei have been offered us during the
Bronze Age.
As for the Hellenes, if they were not already south
of the Balkans in pre-Mycenaean times, we cannot
identify them to the north. Two northern inroads may
indeed have reached Macedonia. The one, marked by
fluted ware, started in Hungary but was hardly on a
scale to account for the Hellenization of Greece, besides
being rather belated for that. The other, bringing inhuma-
tion graves, spectacle brooches, and antennae swords
ought on the above view to be connected with Illyrians.
The labelling of Bronze Age groups is accordingly in
a very tentative and precarious stage. In most cases a
closer analysis of the cultures of the Iron Age is in-
dispensable. We believe that with accurate distribution
maps of leading fossils at several periods the question
might be solved with almost scientific precision. But
RACES 247
in two key areas, France and Hungary, we are likely to
have to wait long before such maps are available. In
the meanwhile Britain offers a most promising field, and
from a co-operation between archaeology and toponymy
and folk-lore most fruitful results are to be expected.
Fig. 31. Late Bronze Age
trumpet from Scotland
(after Anderson). J
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABBREVIATIONS
Antiquity. Antiquity, A quarterly Review of Archaeology, South-
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Ant. J. Antiquaries' Journal, Society of Antiquaries of London.
Arch. Archaeologia, Society of Antiquaries of London.
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IPEK. Jahrbuck fur prahistorische und ethnographische Kunst,
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M.A. Monumenti Antichi, R. Accademia dei Lincei, Rome.
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PSAS. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,
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PZ. Prdhistorische Zeitschrift, Berlin.
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WAM. Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, Devizes.
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1920.
(3) CHILDE. The Dawn of European Civilization. London, 1924.
(4) D^CHELETTE. Manuel d'archtologie prthistorique, celtique et
gallo-romaine. Vol. n. Paris, 1910.
(5) EVANS, JOHN. Ancient Bronze Implements of Great Britain.
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(6) PETRIE, Tools and Weapons. London, 1917.
For CHAPTER I especially
(7) SMITH, SIDNEY. The Early History of Assyria. London, 1927.
(8) CHILDE. The Most Ancient East. London, 1928.
(9) PETRIE. Prehistoric Egypt. London, 1917.
(10) FRANKFORT. Studies on the Ancient Pottery of the Near East.
Royal Anthropological Institute, Occasional Papers, 6 and 8.
London, 1924-6.
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(n) WOOLLEY. "Excavations at Ur." Ant. J. Oct. 1929.
(12) EVANS, A. J. The Palace of Minos at Knossos. London, 1921 ff.
(13) HALL, H. R. The Civilization of Greece in the Bronze Age.
London, 1928.
(14) BLEGEN. Korakou, New York, 1921.
(15) DORPFELD. Alt-Ithaka. Munich, 1927.
(16) TSOUNTAS. KvK\aSiKa in 'E^c/xcpts apx<uo\oyiKTj, 1898-9.
(17) SCHMIDT, H. Sckliemanns Sammlung Troj 'anhcher Altertiimer.
K. Museen zu Berlin, 1902.
(18) GJERSTAD. Studies on Prehistoric Cyprus. Uppsala, 1926.
CHAPTER II
Mining:
(19) ANDRES. Bergbau in der Vorzeit. Leipzig, 1922. (Also article
"Bergbau" in Real.}
Metallurgy:
(20) GOWLAND. "Early Metallurgy in Europe," Arch., LVI.
(21) LUCAS. "Copper in Ancient Egypt," J. Eg. Arch., xm.
(22) GOTZE. "Bronzeguss." Real.
Trade routes :
(23) NAVARRO. " Prehistoric Routes between Northern Europe and
Italy defined by the Amber Trade." Geographical Journal,
Dec. 1925.
Climate:
(24) GAMS AND NORDHAGEN. Postglaziale Klimadnderung. . .in
Mitteleuropa. Munich, 1923.
(25) WAHLE. "DieBesiedelungSiidwestdeutschlandsinvorromischer
Zeit." xii. Eericht der romisch-germanischen Kommission.
Mainz, 1921.
Chariots:
(26) EVANS, A. J. " The Ring of Nestor." JUS. XLV.
Potter's wheel:
(27) HARRISON. Pots and Pans. London, 1927.
Typological series:
(28) MONTELIUS. Die altere Kulturperioden. i. Stockholm.
Chronology:
(29) MULLER, SOPHUS. In MS AN. 1914-1 5.
(30) REINECKE. In AltertUmer unserer heidnischen Forzeit. v.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER III
Swords:
(31) EVANS, A.J. "The Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos." Arch. LIX.
(32) PEAKE. The Bronze Age and the Celtic World. London, 1922.
(33) PARKER-BREWIS. "The Bronze Sword in Great Britain."
Arch. LXXIII.
Spear:
(34) GREENWELL. "The Origin of the Bronze Spear-head," Arch.
LXI.
Razor:
(35) MONTELIUS. DievorklassischeChronologieltaliens. Stockholm,
1912.
Fibulae:
(36) BLINKENBERG. Fibules greeques et orientates. Copenhagen,
1926.
(37) MYRES, J. L. Who were the Greeks? Berkeley, 1930.
(38) KOSSINNA. Die deutsche Forge schichtey eine hervorragend nation-
ale Wissenschaft. 1922.
Pins:
(39) SEGER. "Nadel." Real.
Jet ornaments:
(40) CALLANDER. "Notice of a Jet Necklace " PSAS. L.
CHAPTERS IV-VI inclusive. Special area
Central Europe:
(41) CHILDE. The Danube in Prehistory. Oxford, 1929.
(42) BEHRENS. Eronzezeit Siiddeutscklands. Katalog cv:s romisch-
germanischen Centralmuseums, Mainz, 1916.
(43) KRAFT. Die Kultur der Bronzezeit in Siiddeutschland.
Tubingen, 1925.
Italy:
(44) PEET. The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy and Sicily. Oxford,
1912.
Spain:
(45) SIRET. Les premiers &ges du mital dans la sud-est de I'Espagne.
Brussels, 1889.
(46) "L'Espagne pr^historique." Revue des questions scienti-
fijues, Brussels, 1893.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 251
(47) BoscH-GiMPERA. "Pyrenaen-Halbinsel." Real.
(48) CASTILLO. LaCulturadelVasocampaniforme. Barcelona, 1927.
(49) BURKITT. Prehistory. Cambridge, 1924.
(50) OBERMAIER. "Die bronzezeitlichen Felsgravierungen von
Nordwestspanien." In IPEK. 1925.
Brittany:
(51) DU CHATELLIER. Les tpoques prthistoriques et gauloises dans la
Finis tere. Rennes, 1907.
Rh6ne valley:
(52) KRAFT. "Die Stellung der Schweiz innerhalb der bronze-
zeitlichen Kulturgruppen Mitteleuropas." Anzeiger fur
schweizerische Altertumskunde, Zurich, 1927-8.
Great Britain:
(53) ABERCROMBY. Bronze Age Pottery of Great Britain and Ireland.
Oxford, 1912.
(54) ANDERSON, JOSEPH. Scotland in Pagan Times, n. Edinburgh,
1886.
(55) Fox. The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region. Cambridge,
1923.
(56) WHEELER. Prehistoric and Roman Wales, Oxford, 1925.
(57) COFFEY. The Bronze Age in Ireland, Dublin, 1913.
(58) MACALISTER. Ireland in pre-Celtic Times, Dublin, 1921.
(59) MONTELIUS. In Arch. LXI.
(60) CALLANDER. "Scottish Bronze Age Hoards." PSAS. LVII.
CHAPTER IV
Britain :
(70) Fox. "On two Beakers of the Early Bronze Age." Arch. Camb.
1926.
(71) "A Bronze Age Barrow on Kilpaison Burrows/' Arch.
Camb. 1926.
(72) CRAWFORD. "Barrows." Antiquity, \.
(73) CALLANDER. "Recent Archaeological Research in Scotland."
Arch. LXXVII.
(74) ALLCROFT. The Circle and the Cross. London, 1927.
(75) Stonehenge: CUNNINGTON AND NEWALL, in WAM. XLIV;
Arbor Low, GRAY, in Arch. LVIII; Stennis, THOMAS, in
Arch, xxxiv.
(76) KENDRICK. The Druids. London, 1927.
(77) COFFEY. New Grange. Dublin, 1912.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(78) Dartmoor Research Committee Reports in Trans. Devonshire
Association, xxvi-xxvn, xxix, xxx.
(79) FAIRBAIRN. "Further Discoveries. . .in Hut-circles. , .in Ayr-
shire." PS4S.L1V.
(80) CURWEN, C. "Prehistoric Agriculture in Britain/' Antiquity, i.
CHAPTER V
Scandinavia:
(81) SOPHUS MULLER. Oldtidens Kunst i Danmark, Copenhagen,
1921.
(82) SOPHUS MULLER. Ordning af Danemarkes Oldsager. Copen-
hagen, 1898.
(83) MONTELIUS. Minnenfrdn var ForntiJ. Stockholm, 1917.
(84) SPLIETH. InventarderBronzealterfunde aus Schleswig-Holstein.
Kiel, 1900.
Germany:
(85) NAUE. Die Bronzezeit in Qberbayern. Munich, 1894.
(86) SCHAEFFER. Les tertres funfr aires dans la Forlt de Haguenau.
Haguenau, 1926.
Italy:
(87) MUNRO, ROBERT. Palaeolithic Man and Terramara Settlements
in Europe. Edinburgh, 1912.
Britain:
(88) NEWALL. "Shale Cups of the Early Bronze Age/' WAM.
LIV.
(89) Fox. Arch. Camb. 1928, p. 145.
CHAPTER VII
Italy and Sardinia:
(90) Articles by TARAMELLI and BOSCH-GIMPERA in // Convegno
Archeologico in Sardegna, Reggio nell' Emilia, 1929.
(91) RANDALL-MAC!VER. Fillanovans and Early Etruscans. Oxford,
1924.
(92) Huelva. Real.s.v.
(93) Hoards. B.P. XLVII.
(94) Razor. MA. ix, p. 135.
(95) Nuraghi. TARAMELLI. In M.A. xix.
(96) Hoards. In M.A. xxvu.
(97) Temple. In M.A. xxv.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 253
Alpine Urnfields:
(98) WANNER. "Prehistoric Fortifications in Bavaria." Antiquity,
n, 5.
(99) STAMPFUSS. "Beitrage zur Nordgruppe der Urnenfelder-
kultur." Mannus Erganzungsband> v, Leipzig.
(100) ISCHER. Die Pfahlbauten des Bielersees. Biel, 1928.
(101) CHANTRE. fitudes paltoethnologiques dans le bassin du RhSne,
Age du bronze. Lyons, 1875.
(102) Pouges les-Eaux. Mat. 1879, p. 386.
Scandinavia and North Germany:
(103) NORDEN. "Neue Ergebnisse der schwedischen Felsbildfor-
schung," IPEK. 1927.
(104) SCHMIDT, H. "Die Luren von Daberkow." PZ. vn.
South Russia:
(105) TALLGREN. La Pontide prtscythique (Eurasia Septentrionalis
Antiqua> n). Helsingfors, 1926.
Siberia :
(106) MERHARDT, VON. Die Bronzezeit am Jenessei. Vienna, 1926.
Great Britain :
(107) CRAWFORD. "A Bronze Age Invasion." Ant. J. i.
(108) CRAWFORD AND KEILLER. Wessex from the Air. Oxford, 1927.
(109) PITT-RIVERS. Excavations at Cranboume Chase. Vol. in.
(no) CLAY, R. C. C. "The Woodminton Group of Barrows."
WAM, XLIII.
(in) CUNNINGTON. All Cannings Cross. Devizes, 1923.
(112) Fox. "An Encrusted Urn of the Bronze Age from Wales."
Ant. J. vn.
(113) WOLSELEY. "Prehistoric. . .settlements on Park Brow." Arc A.
LXXVI.
INDEX
Abercromby, John, 156, 232, 234,
243
Adlerberg, 153
adze, 61, 67, 69, 197
Aegean, see Cycladic, Helladic,
Minoan, Mycenae
agriculture, methods of, 159, 226
air photography, 226
All Cannings Cross, 236
alloys, 6, 29
amber, deposits, 47
trade, 44, 46, 56, 144, 168, 172,
213;^* also trade routes
use of, 127, 132, 134, 139, 141,
146, 152, 167, 170, 176, 179,
l88, 200, 204, 208, 212, 214,
229
amulets, 132
animal motive power, 49, 102
Anklets, 176; see also bracelets;
cylinders
ansa lunata, 180
Arbor Low, 163
art, 14, 17, 20, 144, 149, 183, 186,
205, 212, 214, 216, 221 ; see also
carving; spiral patterns; figur-
ines, etc.
associated finds, definition of, 42
Aunjetitz culture, 139 if, 206
Avebury, 163
axes, 61, 67, 71, 181, 197, 222;
see also axe-adzes; battle-axes;
double-axes; celts
axe-adzes, 74, 199
Badarian culture, 13, 24, 132
barrows, 13, 144, 151, 153 f., 161 f.,
169, 173. 187, 209, 213, 217,
221,227, 243,245
battle-axes, metal, 41, 43, 75, 141,
169, 181
stone, 155, 158, 187
beads, segmented, 134, 149, 190, 231
spacers, 134, 141
stone, 14, 132
See also amber; faience; glass; jet
Beaker folk, 153 ff., 225, 243
beehive tombs, huts, see corbelled
tombs
Bell-beakers, 120, 139, 145, 146, 149,
i53> i58» *98
bellows, see blast
berm, 161
bits (bridle), 50, 104, 179, 183, 205,
208, 214, 229
blast, 28, 30
Bohemian palstave, see celts
bracelets, 117 f., 130, 141, 170, 175,
183, 208, 212, 221, 231
brazing, 38
Breuil, H., 164
Bronze Age defined, i
buckets, 205, 222, 231
buckles, 127
burial, collective, 144, 146, 154
contracted, 140, 148, 153, 184
extended, 169, 174
See also coffins; cremation; kists;
barrows; ship-graves
Burkitt, M. C., i, 150, 153, 162, 171
buttons, 35, 126 f., 148, 155, 176,
208, 229; see also V-perforation
Byblos, 39, 122, 127
callais, 146, 149
cannibalism, 209
carvings (rock), 149, 158, 164 f.,
J7r» 2395 see aho cup-and-ring
markings
casting-on, 38, 98
cauldrons, 205, 222, 231
Celtic, see Keltic
celts, flanged, 62, 141, 145, 148, 169,
175, 179, 185, 199
flat, 32, 61, 141, 145, 146, 148,
i52> *53> 167
palstaves, 32, 64, 169, 175, 186,
199, 228
socketed, 34, 66, 71, 169, 197, 199,
2O8, 214, 222, 227, 228
stone, n, 140, 152, 167, 179,208
trunnion, 68, 197
INDEX
celts (contd!)
winged, 64,^1, 175, 179, 197, 205,
2O8, 211, 214, 2l8, 227, 228
chains, 35, 129, 141
chapes, 87, 229
chariots, 50, 104, 171
cheek-pieces, see bits
chronology, absolute, 68, 115, 236
relative, 53
cinerary urns (British), 159, 187,
232
cire perdue process, 35 f., 117
cists, see kists
clasps, 127, 176, 212
Clay, C., 232, 235
climatic changes, 13, 48, 138, 169,
174, 192, 215
Coffey, 93
coffins, 169, 217
combs, 14, 146, 170, 1 80
corbelled tombs, 146, 151, 158, 161
cord ornament, 155, 157, 189, 235
Corded Ware, 144, 153
core-casting, 26, 34, 71, 92
cremation, 152, 158, 174, 179, 184,
187, 194, 201, 204, 206, 211,
216, 217
culture defined, 42
cup-and-ring marks, 150, 164 f.
cupellation, 19
Curwen, C., 159
Cycladic culture, 20, 61, 71, 78, 90,
93, 101, 105, in, 132, 137
cylinders, arm, 117, 121, 175, 182,
208, 209
Cyprus, 61, 78, 90, 107, no, 114
daggers, flint, 145, 155, 169
riveted, 26, 41, 75, 78, 141, 145,
148, 152, 153, 155, 158, 167,
179, 181, 185, 186, 199
tanged, 76
West European, 78, 145, 146, 155,
198
D£chelettet J., 56, 152 n.
diffusionist hypothesis, 10, 24, 40
double-axes, 30, 34, 53, 72, 199
Dowris, 232
Duhn, von, 244
ear-rings, 118, 129, 140
Egypt* 9» Ir> 3°> 35> 58> 6z> 67> 68>
93, 94, 97, 104, 122, 193, 238>
see also predynastic; Middle
Kingdom; Badarian, etc.
El Argar, 147, 190
Evans, A. J., 21
faience, 133 f., 149, 152, 190, 231
ferrules, 78, 90, 92, 97
fibulae, one-piece, H3f., 180, 196,
201, 205, 212, 221, 222, 236,
237.
two-piece, 115 f., 170, 172, 208,
218, 231
fields, 161, 226
figurines, 14, 17, 180, 184, 198
finger-rings, 123, 125, 170, 175, 201,
208
flanges (on hilts), 79, 82, 85, 86
flood, the, 1 6
fluted ornament, 208, 211, 214, 234,
246
Folkton, 1 66
food vessels, 144, 156, 187
forts, 13, 148, 153, 160, 178, 190,
2IO, 226
founders' hoards, 45, 193, 197, 199,
206, 222, 227
fount, 34
Fox, C., 159, 167, 225
fretwork ornament, 157, 176, 184,
214
Gata, 139, 185
ghost-hole, 194
girdles, 127, 205; see also clasps
Glasinac, 221, 245
glass and glazes, 14, 134, 170, 176,
179, 204, 2O8, 212
gorgets, 123, 130, 170, 1 86, 218
gouges, 67, 70, 211, 214
graphite, 206, 211, 214
Greenwell, Canon, 92
Grey Wethers, the, 163
Grimspound, 226
INDEX
grooved hammer-stones, 6, 141, 147
guards (on swords), 83
hafting, methods of, 59, 62, 67, 68,
70, 87, 94, 10 1
halberds, 87 f., 144, 146, 148, 152 n.,
1 66
Hallstatt, 115, 214, 236, 245
harness, 50, 103, 227
Heathery Burn, 229, 231
Helladic cultures, 20 f., 90, 93, 123,
i37> 194
Hellenes, 246
helmets, 200, 204
Helmsdorf, 144
hilts, 76, 82, 84 f.
hoards, varieties and value of, 19, 30,
43; see also founders* hoards;
trade
horn -shaped fire-dogs, 212, 215
horse domesticated, 171, 183, 205,
229
houses, log-cabins, 206, 210
megaron type, 19, 22
pit-dwellings, 140, 153, 210, 226,
238
round (hut-circles), 13, 160, 198,
202, 226, 239
Huelva, 93, 197, 227, 237
hut-circles, see houses
Illyrians, 244 f.
impurities in copper, 8
incense cups, 188 f.
Indo-Europeans, 241
Indus culture, 2, 8 n., 12, 16, 50, 68,
101, 107, 132, 134
ingot torques, 30, 44, 74, 122, 141,
176, 186, 201, 208
invasions, 23, 153, 181, 209, 222,
225
iron, 2, 23, 193, 204, 222
Italici, 1 80, 227, 244
jet, 127, 133, 146, 166, 229
Keltic fields, 226
Kelts, 173, 186, 217. 222. 24.2
Kish, 16, 49, 238
kists, megalithic, 140, 144, 150, 151,
169, 185
Kivik, 165, 171, 221, 238
Klicevac, 185
knee-shafts, 59, 62, 68, 218
knives, 94 f., 169, 179, 205, 208,
211, 214, 218
Knossos, 85
Knovfz culture, 209, 222, 238
Kossinna, G., 85, 242, 243
Kraft, G., 56
lake-dwellings, see pile-dwellings
language and culture, 240
La Tene culture, 236
lathe, 51, 136, 170, 188
Latins, 202, 204
Lausitz culture, 206, 210, 222, 227,
242, 245, 246
lead, 5, 172
Leubingen, 144
Levkas, 20, 90, 123, 194
lip-plugs, 127
lock-rings, 129, 141, 183; see also
ear-rings
Los Millares, 146, 148
Lucretius, 2
lunulae, 41, 43, 124, 137, 166
lurer, 221, 232, 233
lynchets, 226
Maes Howe, 161
malachite, 14
megalithic monuments, see burial,
collective; corbelled tombs;
kists, megalithic; Avebury;
stone circles, etc.
Mesopotamia, 38, 535 see also Pre-
diluvian, Sumerian
Middle Kingdom defined, 16
midrib, 76, 85
mining, 6, 28, 210
Minoan culture, 19, 50, 53, 58, 68,
71, 78, 82, 83, 85, 93, 98, 101,
113, 125, 127, 132, 136, 137,
142, 166, 179, 190, 196, 212,
222, 238
INDEX 257
monogamy, 239
Montelius, O%, 55, 56, 66
moulds, 32, 147, 167, 179, 186, 206
Mtiller, Sophus, 55, 66, 85
Mycenae, 13, 22, 82, 89, 104, 113,
148, 196, 238
Myres, J. L., 113
native copper, 3, 5
navigation, 20, 51; see also sails;
ships
New Grange, 158, 164, 166
New Kingdom defined, 16
nozzles, 28, 30
nuraghe, 198
Old Kingdom defined, 16
open-hearth process, 32, 6 1, 76
ores, 3, 5, 7, 14, 28, 147, 192, 197,
2IO, 222
Palmella, 146
pendants, see wheel-pendants
people defined, 42
peristalith, 161
Perjdmos, 139, 185
Pigorini, 180, 202, 244
pile-dwellings, 145, 179, 185, 213
pins, 14, 106, 141, 152, 153, 172,
180, 183, 186, 205, 212, 214,
218, 221, 228
place-names, 240
ploughs, 49, 171, 226, 239
pommels, 82, 87
potter's wheel, see wheel
Pouges-les-Eaux, 215
Prediluvian culture, 16, 25, 61, 71,
101, 127
Predynastic culture, 14 f., 24, 39, 51,
61, 78, 101, 107
Q-Kelts, 242
queens, 239
Rademacher, 243
Randall-Maclver, 201, 202, 244
rapiers, 32, 82 f., 175, 179, 181, 186,
196, 238
rattles, 206, 215
razors, 97 f., 170, 180, 187, 196 f.,
199, 201, 205, 208, 211, 214,
216, 218, 228
reduction, 5
Reinecke, P., 55
Remedello, 14
retardation defined, 57
ricasso9 83, 85, 228
rivets, 37, 83, 89
Romans, see Italici
routes, see trade
sails, 9, 52
salt, 204, 210, 224
science, 3
Scyths, 222, 246
seals, 10, 53, 125
seam, 34,^71
self-sufficiency of neolithic com-
munities, 4, 9
Shardana, 191, 193
shells, marine, in inland regions, 141,
153
shields, 175, 213, 229, 237
ships, 52, 171, 200
ship-graves, 217
sickles, 10 1 f., 169, 175, 179, 186,
199, 202, 208, 211, 224,227,228
Silesian culture, 209
Siret, 147
slaves, 10, 172, 192
Slavonian culture, 145
Slavs, 246
smelting, 28
smith, position of the, 4, 10
Smith, Sidney, 39
solar symbols, 135, 205, 212, 218
solder, 37, 85, 172
spears, socketed, 34, 92 f., 175, 181,
186, 197, 199, 205, 208, an,
222, 229, 237
tanged, 90, 180, 224
specialization, industrial, 5, 15, 30,
213
spectacle brooch, 115
spiral ornament, 75, 122, 164, 165,
172, 180, 184, 212, 222
258 INDEX
spouts to vases, 136, 206
Stennis, 163
stone circles, 162 f.
Stonehenge, 162
Strabo, 172
Straubing, 139, 210
sub-boreal, see climatic changes
Sumerians, 7, 8, 17, 26, 35, 37, 39,
5°» 53, 7i» 78, 9°> 97» IOI» I05»
106, in, 125, 128, 129, 136, 238
swords, 85 f., 148, 169, 179, 197,
205, 208, 211, 2l8, 222, 227,
228, 246
terremare, 104, 178, 184, 202, 244
Teutons, 169, 172, 216, 241
Thomsen, 2
Thracians, 245
tin, 5, 8, n, 28, 40, 140, 147, 214
toilet-sets, 101
torques, 1 1 8, 123, 186
torsion, 122, 219
T6szeg, 139, 145, 180, 183
trade, conditions of, 38, 39
evidence for, 14, 17, 20, 44, 139,
144, 146, 167, 172, 179, 181,
190, 202, 205, 208, 213, 227
routes, 46, 56, 139, 144, 168, 213,
222
Troy, 18, 19, 50, 61, 71, 78, 90, 94,
102, 107, 123, 129, 136, 140
trumpets, 171, 221, 232, 247
Trundholm, 220, 239
tutuli, 118, 128, 170, 176, 183,
219
tweezers, 100, 170
types, function of, 42
typological chronology explained
13, 53
Ur of the Chaldees, 13, 16, 17, 26,
39, 49, 128, 238
urnfields, 194, 201, 204, 205, 207,
209, 212, 227, 243
V -perforation, buttons with, 133,
H9> 155, M8
valve moulds, 32, 62, 71, 76
Vapheio, 142
vessels, metal, 36, 135, 189, 201, 204,
208, 212, 214, 219
stone, 14, 136, 189
Vikings, 217
Villanova culture, 202 f., 214
violin-bow fibula, 113
votive hoards, 44
wart ornament, 176, 180, 206, 211
weights, 53, 74
wheel, potter's, 50, 137
wheel-pendants, 135, 176, 212
wheeled vehicles, 9, 49, 150, 220
Windmill Hill, 160
wire, 37, 106 n.
woodwork, 137, 157, 228
wrist-guards, 120, 148, 152
writing, 9, 53
X -section of torques, 123
xerophilous plants, 174
youths employed as bellows, 30
zinc, 7
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY W. LEWIS, M.A., AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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